For me there’s nothing better than spending time outdoors fishing and being surrounded by wildlife. I think I’m particularly lucky, because I live in a time where I’ve actually seen many of my favorite fishing spots get better over the years. A lot of the conservation work done by organizations like Trout Unlimited and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is paying off. That’s not to say that we’ve eliminated the threats to nature, but it feels like we hit an inflection point some time during my lifetime. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is a non-profit organization that was created by Congress in 1984 to direct “public conservation dollars to the most pressing environmental needs and matches those investments with private funds.” They’re based in Washington, DC, and they’ve “awarded over 11,000 grants to more than 3,800 organizations in the United States, investing a total of $1.8 billion for conservation” over the past 3 decades.

Get Wild

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is all about bringing public and private conservation projects together. They don’t seem to actually do any work on the ground, but they have the money to significantly influence where conservation funding goes. You can get a sense for how the NFWF works by reading up on their Grant Programs, and you can browse their Grants Library to learn more about the specific projects (though this feature is currently giving me a server error). There isn’t all that much else on the NFWF website, though they also have a Impact-Directed Environmental Accounts Program that “receives, manages, and disburses funds that originate from court orders, settlements of legal cases, regulatory permits, licenses, and restoration and mitigation plans.” If you like what NFWF is doing for conservation, then you can get involved by checking out their Careers page. The Digital Media and Web Services Manager could be a fit for a recent grad, and there’s also a Grants Administrator position posted on Idealist that seems like a good fit for a new grad.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• NFWF.org
• Jobs at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
• About the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
• National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Grant Programs
• National Fish and Wildlife Foundation News

What’s your favorite place to experience wildlife?

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