wilderness related careers

j williams

j williams

Joined
Nov 14, 2005
Messages
11,133
Hey people!

I am thinking it is time for a change for me. I love working EMS, and I will always be a part of it, even just on a PRN basis. I am still young, and I feel as if I want to seek more education, and venture into the field of enviromental sciences. With some forestry training.

I know being a park ranger is a very hard position to get, its pretty competitive. What other careers should I look at that are related to wilderness/ enviroment?

Im asking here b/c of the vast amount of wilderness knowlage Ive found here. This wasnt an easy decision for me to make, but I just feel like I want to further my education, and complete a change while Im still fairly young.

Thanks guys. Live well, j
 
Jake thats great bro and I wish you luck. I wouldn't count out the ranger gig, get on the list and try, with your ems background I am sure that will score some points!
 
thanks tony. I loved my time in the army, and my present EMS career, I just want to try something differant, and get my degree before my boys get collage age.(which is a while from now)

Yeah the ranger thing is HUGE shot in the dark, but I would be happy with anything related to the wilderness, or outdoors. We will be relocating somewhere when my wife finishes her schooling, b/c I hate missouri, and we want a drastic scenery change...
 
I used to want to be a Forestry engineer. My mom's co-worker's son got into the business and started around 70 K!
 
I am (was) in the environmental business. At least in this part of the woods (pun intended), 80% of the environmental work is involved in property acquisition and the other 20% is in planning and major environmental cleanups). I was a consultant and now work for a former client (a developer). There's been a few jobs where I've been in the woods (including pathfinding for haul roads up in the mountains - now THAT was cool), but for the most part, I'm at industrial sites. You'd want to find a job at a major infrastructure firm (involved in railroad, dams, etc.) or at a state environmental department if you want to get out in the woods. E-mail me if you want some help.
 
What about something with the fish and game department? Catching poachers could be fun...
 
Were in the same boat. I quit my job, moved to Texas and I'm looking for a job here in a field that reflects my intrests a bit more.
 
Winterminute- thanks for the offer. I will take you up on it and email you. Is this a field that is pretty stable, and has lots of growth, or is it a hard field to get your foot in the door?

mike- that sounds very interesting as well. With my scout trining in the military, that might help me out alot in that field. That would be more of the conservation side of schooling I think. I will totally check that out.
 
j williams said:
Is this a field that is pretty stable, and has lots of growth, or is it a hard field to get your foot in the door?
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I think it depends on the market - right now in the NYC area the environmental industry is booming, and the consulting firms can't find enough engineers, scientists, and geologists. I've been doing this for 10 years, and so far the only time I've been unemployed was for a month and a half in 2002 when the company I worked for went under for stupid reasons.
 
j williams said:
that is good to know. What degree did you get?
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I have a civil engineering degree, but I know plenty of people in the business with envrionmental science, geology, (chem, civil, mechanical, environmental) engineering, and even biology and chemistry degrees. I even know a few with geography or just an Associates' in construction management. There's plenty of other degrees out there that you can make into an environmental career.

Actually, you could use your EMS skills to help parley into environmental health and safety, industrial hygene, etc. so you're not starting at the bottom.
 
right on J... change is good... good luck my friend... there is a lot of jobs out there you can look into...

i did tree work for about 8 months, until i fell through a roof and blew my knee up... it's great work, very physical and you get to be in a different spot everyday... the $$$ isn't bad either..

the misses makes a grip of $$$, she does vegetation restoration, for the santa clara valley water district.. she loves it.. her main fortay is trail-building and trail maintanence.... now she's basically a glorified/high paid landscaper... www.valleywater.org you can try looking into something sililar, it's not quite in the wilderness, but she is outside, in a different spot everyday...
 
Yeah that looks awesome mike. I would love to get into some kind of trail restoration, vegitation thing like that. It looks like a sweet gig no doubt.....
 
Try USAJOBS for all federal park positions. Not many out there, but I have seen what looked like some fun jobs.
 
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