Dear all, My name's Juan Vilata and I'm a biologist from Spain. Since I obtained my degree I've been trying (more or less successfully) to develop a professional career as a field biologist. The reason why I'm writing now to the ECOLOG-L is that, in these last years, I've noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find paid positions as a field technician or field assistant. And the reason for this is that many of the potential positions are presently offered as volunteer positions, that is, working for no salary at all. Besides, many of such announcements state that the selected applicant is not only expected to work for free for the project, but also, that he/she must pay the entire expenses regarding travel, food and lodging. Furthermore: in those cases in which the project is carried out in protected areas that require fees for developing research projects within them, the volunteers are also expected to pay for these expenses. The usual argument is that these fees are quite low, around 10 $ per day or so; but however, if the project is planned to extend for three months, for example, this means that an extra 300 $ must be payed by the applicant -adding to the costs previously mentioned.
In other words: it's not just about working for free; actually, what all this does mean is paying for being allowed to work! My claim is that this situation is unbearable. I mean, volunteering is OK when one is a college/undergraduate student looking for experience. But, at the end of the day, people must earn their living and simply cannot afford to live continuously jumping from one volunteering to the next one. The only choice for us who are neither lottery winners nor rich heirs, is to work part of the year somewhere outside the biological fieldwork area -and try to save enough for volunteering the rest of the year. I'm well aware of the fierce competence existing for the studentships and project grants. Also, there seems to be a worldwide tendence to reduce the public investment in basic fieldwork research. Which leads to researchers and graduate students coping with project budgets which are clearly too short to cover all the involved expenses. Thus, the first and most obvious step is to avoid hiring professional staff and use volunteer assistants instead. So I'm not accusing anybody -obviously neither the students, nor the professors who guide their projects. It is clear that this problem climbs up to the political and administrative levels. I'm just trying to state that, if this situation persists, the concept of field biologist will change- it won't be a vocational choice anymore, but only a privilege of those with big bank accounts. Thanks for your attention, and best wishes, Juan Vilata-Simón
