The 'lonely conservationist' advocating for better care of workers

Jessie Panazzolo was given a stuffed gorilla when she was 3, and from then on, she always wanted to be a conservationist. But a reasonable career track of being gainfully employed or on a livable wage almost doesn't exist in the sector, she explains to me this week on the Mongabay Newscast. She details the dwindling career prospects, the grueling conditions conservationists must endure, and the mental toll they're taking on themselves.

Following Jeremy Hance's reporting on the mental health crisis afflicting conservationists, I contacted Panazzolo to gain more insight into her journey in the conservation sector and how she came to lead a community of like-minded professionals who had heartbreaking stories about pursuing their passions.

Panazzolo has been fired for being sick, twice. And had trees thrown at her by orangutans. But these are far from the only struggles she and other conservationists have faced.

"I've been chased by tigers or have orangutans rip trees out of the ground and chucked in my direction. But all of these are seen as like not normal risks that you'd put in risk assessments."

She founded The Lonely Conservationists and Earth Carer Care to provide resources to conservationists of all walks of life and to offer workshops to conservation NGOs on improving working conditions and caring for their employees.

"I wanted to make sure that there was light shed on a range of struggles faced in the conservation industry and give more weight to the need to start to address these. And ever since then, I've been running workshops for NGOs and for teams … to help their teams to look after themselves and each other and build resilience."

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast, here.

Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Image Credit: Jessie Panazzolo. Image courtesy of Jessie Panazzolo.

—-

Timecodes

(00:00) The 'unfair' job of conservation

(13:49) Creating a community for conservation workers

(18:39) Not all NGOs are on board

(25:22) How conservation has changed

(36:52) Fighting for nature in a world working against it

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(359)

Australia claims it's 'on track' to meet its environment targets. Scientists disagree

Australia is one of 17 "megadiverse" countries that account for 70% of Earth's biodiversity. However, Australia is unique in having the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world. That makes cons...

26 Mai 42min

The world must address pandemic threats urgently, says former CDC officer

"[The]cruel irony here [is] that the world cannot get its act together to address these threats … people are dying, animals are suffering, we're losing rainforest … these are all interconnected threat...

19 Mai 35min

Protest works, but it needs your help now more than ever, veteran activists say

"We are experiencing what some people call sort of a shutdown of the public square in the United States and around the world," says veteran environmental activist André Carothers. Along with the forme...

12 Mai 51min

A new Netflix documentary captures rare mountain gorilla behavior

"That might be something that you see in a decade, not in two years of filming," Tara Stoinksi, CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, tells me. The behavior she's referring to occurs in mountain gorill...

5 Mai 38min

Centering an Indigenous approach to forestry through reciprocity, not extraction

Forester and scientist Suzanne Simard is well known for her landmark 1997 paper, which demonstrated that two distinct species of trees could share resources. At the time, it turned traditional Western...

28 Apr 41min

Across oceans, seabird flyways gain recognition — and a chance at protection

The routes taken by migratory birds, known as flyways, often cross vast expanses of ocean. Six of these marine flyways have now been formally recognized by the U.N.'s Convention on Migratory Species,...

21 Apr 28min

The coyotes next door: What we get wrong about America's 'song dog'

Coyotes are now present in almost every major urban-metropolitan area in the United States, yet conflicts between the canines and humans are exceptionally low. Between 1960 and 2006, only 146 docume...

14 Apr 44min