"What Is Your Salary?"

 

A rather amusing online chat was had the other day. I have stopped laughing long enough to write about it today (and take a break from post mortem reports).

I was asked about running both the Fox and Wild Canids study as well as the Bristol Fox Deaths Project. I showed a couple of photos of the bursting Lever Arch files covering much of the work and explained how things worked. I was then asked (by a zoologist): "What Is Your Salary?"  

It took a few minutes before I could respond due to the hysterical laughing.  

Let me explain something, and I believe that I have before but why not again?  A naturalist, even a field naturalist who has concentrated almost 50 years to foxes, wild felids and some mustelids does not earn a salary. Naturalists do not get any recognition.  University and college biology departments that used to have naturalists were closed down long ago and most now consider naturalists of the "old school type" bordering on extinction. Naturalists do the field work and gather data and this is what paid zoologists usually put their names to on papers that keep their funding coming in. I have faced that stealing of data several times over the years and all from people who "stick strictly to academic standards" (anyone says that these days I know they are going to steal whatever they can) and "always reference sources" -only one ever has.

If you are lucky you might get a book deal -at least in the past you might. Now you have to be a celebrity or be on TV or You Tube spouting dogma for that kind of thing.  Cut and paste and having good looks and good hair (both of those left me some while ago) is what draws in the money. I gave up watching a lot of TV wildlife programmes as the music back-track and getting as hi def footage as possible of something killing another something is what makes "sexy" and sellable TV.  You Tube? You Tubers cannot get verified factual historical events or individuals correct despite there being many books on the various topics they cover (because no one reads books now).  Lots of wildlife 'facts' are anything but and no sources are usually referenced and acting like a clown (a bad one) may be entertaining but what does it achieve?

I used to be regularly on call for the BBC, ITV and even Sky TV when it came to exotic animals on the loose in the UK and I did a lot of UK regional, local and national radio stations as well as some Australian and other countries' radio. All wanted the sensational stuff and after three interviews I knew what questions would be asked every time by journalists -and they, not me, called me "Britain's Big Cat Detective".  All unpaid and the reason the BBC was blacklisted by me was the disgusting way they treated one naturalist (making his decades of work a joke) and the fact that when I gave up hours of my time for recording they decided that after the work was done they would give me the runaround and not pay.  

I will tell you that at one time I had someone estimate how much money I had put into not just the Exotic Animals Register (EAR) work but the other wildlife work -I stopped him after he told me what I had spent in just five years!

Wildlife rescuers are not paid.  Sarah Mills the Bristol Fox Lady, gets to see some terrible injuries and is out helping foxes daily -unpaid.

It took m,e three years of day-in and day-out arguing to get the fox post mortems and I only found out this year that the pathologist carrying them out is not paid. Some tests are paid for but all the PM results we have are from unpaid work.   

This is how it works in the UK where the "nation of animal lovers" does not really care about animals, and especially wildlife. Dogma is what pays and the people pushing it have never carried out any field research or even archive research because that involves mind numbing and eye straining work. Better to cut and paste from another source (that promoted dogma).

 If you think that being a naturalist is a career it is -but "Naturalists do not make any money" but we get labels such as "environmental campaigner", "mammalogist", "environmental conservationist" as well as "tree-hugging ****" (the last one I hear so often as it seems the last and only argument small brained hunt people have).

When it comes to my yearly salary it reads "£00.00"

I hope that helps.