One Day, One Job » zoology

Saint Louis Zoo

Willy Franzen — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:32:35 +0000

I’m in St. Louis for the weekend, mostly to watch my girlfriend’s little sister’s volleyball tournament, but I’m looking for other cool things to do since it’s my first time here. Yesterday I got to visit the Saint Louis Zoo, which is fantastic. (And I promise I didn’t act like this kid.) I got to see monkeys, giraffes, zebras, lions, penguins, gorillas, elephants, somali wild asses, and a whole range of other animals that I’d never even heard of before. I even got to see the mountain nyala that makes an appearance in the zoo’s logo. I was really impressed with the Saint Louis Zoo—it has a wonderful layout and an amazing collection of animals. The best part, though, was that we got to see feeding time for the grizzly bears. It may sound barbaric, but it was nothing of the sort. We watched as two of the laziest bears that I’ve ever seen would catch oranges in their mouths and then suck out the meat while leaving behind the rind. What made the experience even better was that it was free. Saint Louis Zoo is a “free zoo,” so all you have to pay for is parking.

Don’t Be a Somali Wild Ass

The Saint Louis Zoo got its start with the 1904 World’s Fair, but wasn’t officially started until 1910 that the Zoological Society of St. Louis was established. They eventually chose a site and started acquiring animals. It’s been a huge success, and I think that the Saint Louis Zoo is certainly achieving its mission to “conserve animals and their habitats through animal management, research, recreation, and educational programs that encourage the support and enrich the experience of the public.” You can learn a ton about the zoo by reading up on its history, so do that and then take a look at their Jobs page. They have a number of seasonal positions opening up for spring and summer, along with some great full-time positions. You’ll want to take an especially close look at the following jobs: Membership Assistant, Horticulture Gardener, Keeper – Children’s Zoo, Keeper- Great Apes, Keeper – Invertebrates, and Keeper – Sea Lion Show. It’s a great zoo, so if you don’t apply for a job, at least give it a visit.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you visited the Saint Louis Zoo?

Underwater Adventures Aquarium

Willy Franzen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:52:05 +0000

When I’m doing my daily research and looking for interesting jobs or internships, I often find postings on third party job boards. I’m not a big fan of job boards, so I try to go directly to the employer’s site to get information on the opportunities. Today I was Googling an internship, and the first result was completely unrelated. Luckily, it was a way more interesting internship with Underwater Adventures Aquarium at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. It’s the world’s largest underground aquarium, and it’s just the kind of place that you might end up at during a summer vacation road trip. They say it’s like scuba diving without getting wet. There are 1.2 million gallons of water, and there’s a “300 foot-long curved tunnel, complete with a moving walkway that simulates a scuba diving adventure.” Underwater Adventures has sharks, octopuses, jellyfish, and all kinds of fish, and you can watch them all get fed. They even offer birthday parties where you can sleep with the sharks.

Take Your Job Search Underwater

Judging from the excitement that Shark Week generates among my friends, there are plenty of you who would love to work at an aquarium. Whether it’s sharks, sea turtles, boring old fish, or one of their other 5,000 aquatic creatures that get you excited, Underwater Adventures (which will soon be rebranded as Sea Life Centres) is worth checking out. They don’t really have a great About page, so the Wikipedia article on them is the best place to get background information (beyond making a visit, of course). If you like what you see, then you should consider jobs at Underwater Adventures Aquarium. Right now they have positions available that include Animal Interpreter, Box Office Sales, Energetic Mascot, On-site Educator, and Outreach Educator. There are also some more advanced positions in Sales/Marketing. Take a look, hold your nose, and dive in.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever visited Underwater Adventures Aquarium?

ARKive

Willy Franzen — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:39:45 +0000

I’m up in Michigan for my annual Father’s Day fly fishing trip. The town that I stay in is called Grayling, which is named after a fish. Unfortunately, it’s a fish that I’ll never catch here, because it’s extinct—at least the Michigan population is. Back in the 1800s the entire state of Michigan was logged, and apparently the value of the wood harvested from Michigan during the Gold Rush was $1 billion greater than the gold found in California during the same time. That had some serious environmental consequences, and one of those was the extinction of the Michigan Grayling. The introduction of trout to many of Michigan’s rivers didn’t help either, as they outcompeted the grayling for food. Luckily, we still have populations of grayling in Montana, Alaska, and much of Canada. They’re not completely lost, but there are plenty of species that we’ll never get to see. ARKive is changing it. Not only are they fighting to prevent many species from going extinct, but they’re also documenting the world’s most endangered species so even if they are extirpated, they’ll never be completely lost. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, a UK based organization with an American arm located in Washington, DC.

Get on the ARKive

Beyond having an extremely clever name, ARKive also has an insanely cool website. You can access all kinds of information and media related to species on the brink. For instance, you can take a look at the Kirtland’s Warbler, a bird species that also happens to be native to the Grayling, MI area. You can see everything from pictures to a list of threats to the species. It’s an amazing educational tool that will not only preserve species historically even if they don’t make it, but will also help build support to fight the root causes behind species extinction. ARKive has put together a fascinating resource, and you should really spend some time checking it out. If you really like what you see, you may want to start thinking about a job with ARKive. They don’t have any positions posted right now beyond a volunteer Administrative & Data Entry Assistant posted on Idealist, but you should still reach out to them and see if there’s anything coming in the near future.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What’s your favorite endangered species?

Wildlife Conservation Society

Willy Franzen — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:41:20 +0000

I’m a nut about wildlife. I don’t watch Animal Planet all day or anything, but I get ridiculously excited when I see a new species in the wild. My hope is to one day run into a mountain lion in the wild, at least as long as I’m not being hunted. As fanatical as I am about wildlife, I bet I don’t even come close to the people at the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York City based non-profit. They were founded in 1895 with a “clear mission to save wildlife and wild places across the globe.” Their first major success was aiding the recovery of American Bison, and now they’re working to “protect many of the world’s iconic creatures here and abroad, including gorillas in the Congo, tigers in India, polar bears in the Arctic, and ocean giants in our world’s amazing seascapes.” Beyond doing that, they also run 5 parks in New York City—the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo.

Jobs in the Wild

According to Wildlife Conservation Society’s About page, they’re committed to protecting 25% of the world’s biodiversity. I’m not sure where that number came from, how it’s measured, or what exactly it means, but it sounds like an ambitious goal for a passionate organization. The way that pursues this goal is by focusing on 4 key issues: “climate change; natural resource exploitation; the connection between wildlife health and human health; and the sustainable development of human livelihoods.” With so much on their plate, Wildlife Conservation Society has a lot of job opportunities. You can find all of the information on their Jobs page, where they separate opportunities into New York City Full Time, New York City Seasonal, and Opportunities in the Field. Oddly enough, all of these pages feed into the same job search function. You can narrow down your search by any of the aforementioned categories, or you can just look at all of their job opportunities. You’ll probably want to take an especially long look at the following positions: Development Associate – Operations, Guest Relations Supervisor, Marketing Assistant, Membership Sales Associate, Pathology Technician, Program Assistant – Global Program Development, and Program Coordinator. You can apply for any of these positions online.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever been to any of Wildlife Conservation Society’s parks?

Shedd Aquarium

Willy Franzen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:13:34 +0000

My parents are in town for the weekend, and I’ve been thinking of fun things to do with them around Chicago. One place that came to mind is Shedd Aquarium. I don’t think that we’ll end up getting a chance to make it there this weekend, but it was certainly a good thought. And once I thought about it, I realized that they’re probably hiring. Shedd Aquarium is much like other aquariums now, but it really stood out when it was opened in the 1930s. The aquarium was founded by John G. Shedd, retired president of Marshall Field & Company, and financed by him with $3 million in gifts. The goal was to bring Chicago up to par with other “cosmopolitan” cities that had aquariums, and by the end of the project Chicago’s aquarium “housed the greatest variety of sea life under one roof.” It also happened to be “the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater collection,” which meant that they had to ship millions of gallons of seawater from Florida on trains to provide a proper habitat for the sea life.

Shedd Your Job Search Worries

To this day, I still find it extremely impressive that an aquarium in Chicago can have whales and dolphins. The idea of a Beluga Whale in the heart of the midwest blows my mind. Although now the aquarium is more focused on education than on bringing up Chicago’s status, it’s still a great tourist attraction and a wonderful resource for the city. I’d imagine that Shedd Aquarium is very much like other aquariums in its mission and values, which means that they’ll have similar jobs. Right now they have a number of jobs posted, and a few look like possibilities for new grads. These include Membership Coordinator, Administrative Assistant (President’s Office), Brand Traffic Assistant, and Media Coordinator. You can apply by sending a cover letter and résumé to jobs@sheddaquarium.org.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever been to Shedd Aquarium?

National Audubon Society

Willy Franzen — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:28:48 +0000

John James Audubon painted birds. His seminal work, Birds of America, was a collection of 435 life-size prints. To this day, when you hear the name Audubon, you think of birds. Interestingly enough, John James Audubon had no direct involvement with the founding of the National Audubon Society. Audubon’s widow, Lucy, tutored a man named George Bird Grinnell and some of Audubon’s love of birds must have rubbed off, as Grinnell was one of the Audubon Society’s founders. To this day, the Audubon Society persists in its mission “to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.” The Audubon Society works to achieve this mission through a national network of community-based nature centers and chapters and scientific, educational, and advocacy programs.

These Jobs Are for the Birds

The National Audubon Society has a long list of current job openings in locations all across the country. We scanned over them, and identified all the jobs that don’t list experience requirements for you. The Audubon does a very good job of identifying their desired experience level for each position, so you should be pretty confident that these jobs can be considered entry-level.

There are also quite a few jobs listed that require 2 to 3 years of experience. These may be worth a look, since many of them seem like they could be filled by competent new college grads, but we’ll let you go find them on Audubon’s Jobs page. We should also warn you that one job listing says that the start date is in 2006. We hope that this is a result of a careless copy-paste job, but we have no way of knowing how recently all of these jobs were posted. We couldn’t find much information on what it’s like to work for Audubon, but it probably varies widely depending on location. If you’re a birder, and you’re looking for non-profit work, figure out which of the above jobs you like the best and send your cover letter and resume to HumanResources@audubon.org.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What’s your favorite bird? We like birds of prey like hawks, eagles, and falcons.

American Association of Zoos & Aquariums

Willy Franzen — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:00:55 +0000

The idea for today’s post came from a television commercial. So, the next time your Mom yells at you for being lazy and watching TV instead of looking for a job, tell her that being a couch potato is part of your job search repertoire. Seriously. We know that a ton of college students are watching TV with a laptop on their lap, and hopefully you’re one of them. If you’re in the right mindset, you’ll realize that no matter what you’re watching, you’ll be absolutely bombarded with new job ideas. Take these ideas, do a Google search, and find a job! You know what? We might just write an article about using the tube to find a job. (Update: We did, here’s The Couch Potato’s Guide to Job Search.)

Besides advertising with TV commercials, the American Association of Zoos & Aquariums is a non-profit organization that accredits – see if you can guess – zoos and aquariums. The AZA and their team of experts ensure that accredited zoos and aquariums meet extremely high standards. “Fewer than 10% of the approximately 2,400 animal exhibitors licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture are AZA accredited,” so their seal of approval isn’t something that they throw around lightly. We looked around the AZA’s website for information about their jobs and couldn’t find anything, but cold calling might be worth a try. On the other hand, the AZA has a wealth of job listings for the zoos and aquariums that they accredit. Since many of the organizations that AZA approves are also non-profits, we thought you’d like to know more about these jobs working with animals.

Now, not all of AZA’s job listings are from non-profits, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you need to look closely at the zoo or aquarium that is actually listing the job. Obviously, Walt Disney World is not a non-profit, but the International Exotic Animal Sanctuary and the Houston Zoo are. Positions in the AZA Job Listings range from Research Analyst to Aquarist. There are also a ton of internships available, which may be a reasonable option for new college grads who want to get into zoology or related animal care fields. Jobs are listed in chronological order, so scroll down to the bottom for the newest listings. Don’t be afraid to visit the websites of the institutions that are listed and look for jobs that aren’t posted on the AZA website. You could even use the AZA’s list as your cold calling list.

Note: On April 27th we revisited entry-level jobs at the American Association of Zoos & Aquariums.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Tell us about your favorite childhood zoo experience in the comments.