even nearing the cusp of apathy from how much we try to do to protect our planet as dedicated and resilient individuals. To ask what the future of our work entails suggests that you are not content with how it is now. It suggests, even indirectly or unintentionally that what we are doing needs to be improved, changed, bigger or better.
Planting this seed in a conservationist’s mind is fodder for insanity. Usually, we are already doing everything in our power to create change. Every change we do make only highlights the changes that we aren’t making and that causes even more fear that we aren’t doing enough. A simple question like “what can we expect from the future of your project?", can make us feel guilty, embarrassed, and inadequate for not having solved climate change, microplastics in the ocean, or even the unfair treatment of conservationists in our own in our lifetimes. This may seem like over the top or irrational thinking, as nobody blatantly made these accusations, but after bouts of exhaustion, this question could seem like a challenge.
A better question to round out these interviews would have been to ask what I hope to see for the future of conservationists, as this more inspires us to imagine the future we want but in a way that doesn’t directly hold us accountable for global or systemic issues. Thinking about this more made me ponder the way we speak to conservationists and how our language has influence over the thoughts and feelings of those who tend to push themselves to their limits in order to achieve.
There is something to say about using your language in a way that acknowledges the work that others do and at the same time acknowledging the fact that it is okay not to be smashing goals at every waking moment. Conservationists need no inspiration to get motivated, in fact, they are driven to conserve wildlife and ecosystems not because it is a well-paid career or because it’s a cushy lifestyle, but because they are passionate about what they do. What conservationists actually need reminding is that they need to take care of themselves, take the time to slow down and actually acknowledge the incredible changes they have achieved for our planet.
Ever since I was three years old, I had been on a mission to conserve primates and their habitats with a particular drive to save the orangutan. From ages five to twenty-four I worked tirelessly to get to where I wanted to go. When I was five, I asked my mum how I could save the orangutans, and as you can imagine she didn’t have a solid answer (this is the first time I realised that adults in fact do not know everything). When I was thirteen I applied and was accepted to a high school-oriented around wildlife and agriculture to see if I could find answers there. Straight out of school at eighteen, I started my biodiversity and conservation degree looking for even more specific world-saving solutions where I traveled overseas to work on grassroots conservation projects in each of my summer breaks. When I was twenty-four, I finally landed an honours degree in North Sumatra researching the impact of restoring forests on orangutan populations with the top orangutan researchers in Indonesia. You best believe that I was looking forward that entire time, blinkers on, and only focusing on the next steps I needed to take in order to achieve my goals.
Sitting in my bedroom in North Sumatra with creepy builders outside my window peering in occasionally at the strange white woman sitting on her bed, I felt trapped in the four walls that were safe and cool enough to hold me. For the first time in my life, I let myself think back to all of the steps I took to get from five-year-old Jessie who was asking her mum how to save the orangutans to actually being in Indonesia and researching the conservation implications of restoring their habitat. Even at that moment, I could feel how bewildering that was, that right there and then was the first time I had ever granted myself permission to look back and feel proud about the work I had done in order to achieve my five-year-old dreams.
It’s possible that because of the glamorisation and glorification of the industry, that others on the outside may have assumed that I had been reveling in my successes my whole life. In fact, it may seem to the general public that conservationists are constantly succeeding and living with the notion that their lives amount to something great. This is how I believe that people in my family, educational institutions, and workplaces have always approached my life and this perception has often made me feel guilty for the sadness or frustration I often felt about the industry. Many times, I have had my sadness met with comments that try to invalidate it, like “life always ends up working out for you, don’t worry about it” and as someone who does 40 hours of unpaid work a week being told this by people with full-time paid jobs, it seems as though they have a different perception of what life working out for me means. When people conceive the world of conservation to be what they see represented in David Attenborough's documentaries, they don’t carry the awareness that you granted yourself one moment of pride in your twenty years of volunteering, studying, working, and researching.
In fact, people also didn’t see the human feces I stepped and waded through every day as I walked through the mangroves and beaches of Nosy Be. They didn’t see me crying in my hut alone with a fever thinking about all the things I could have said to my loved ones but didn’t and now it was too late (very dramatic, but when you think you’re going to die in Africa that’s what it’s like). They also didn’t see me run for my life from a grown mother orangutan, or a grown mother tiger for that matter, fearful of my life because I didn’t even eat breakfast that morning. Which brings me to my next point.
After I had spent a morning in Marapo Taman Negara, Malaysia, following elephant footprints to a place called “Gua Gajah” or “Elephant Caves” in English, I found myself in a literal depiction of a nightmare. After stepping one foot in the cave, I was instantly told to turn around and run, the local guides running after us, ripping trees from the ground and carving them into spears with their machetes. My feet clad in the most practical footwear, reef shoes, and waterproof socks, sunk into the mud as I ran and slowed me down. Echoed ROARS followed us until they didn’t anymore and we could stop in a clearing, catch our breath and count our lucky stars.
That afternoon I returned to my hut and I messaged my family chat group something to the extent of “I just ran for my life from a family of tigers”. My dad nonchalantly said something to the effect of “that’s nice dear” and proceeded to ask my brother how his football season had been going. I can’t even believe I have to say this but if your daughter doesn’t eat breakfast, the most important meal of the day, and manages to out-run tigers in foot consuming clay- you best believe you should have some reassuring and loving words to say to her afterward.
Maybe that’s the thing with conservationists, you may hear these stories from us a lot. We outrun a tiger one day, the next it’s an orangutan and you think that this is just part of the job description. To us though, there was a very real chance we could have died each of these times. Maybe as a self-protecting instinct, our friends and family refuse to accept the realities of the stories we tell as instances that have actually happened to us. Or maybe it’s because they sound so fantastical- could they truly believe that I had spent my morning running from tigers? It seems very unlikely for a Wednesday morning I will admit. But this is something else you need to remember when talking to conservationists, their lives may seem bewildering and even unbelievable at times- but you must remember to not humour their experiences as trivial or fantastical when to them, they may have been completely life-altering.
There was one time when I came home from high school and announced to my mum that “I did the most AMAZING thing at school today!” to which she replied,
“Jessie, EVERY DAY you do the most amazing thing” and returned to what she was doing.
This could have been an encouraging and supportive statement if her intent was to follow it up by stopping what she was doing and asking “but what AMAZING thing was it today?” but instead, that was the end of our conversation. As conservationists are go-getters and high achievers by the nature of what our careers demand, it may seem that the conservationist you know is always doing notable tasks that are worthy of excitement. To an onlooker,
