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Writer's pictureAmber Lea Kincaid

Why Paid Internships?

Paid internships are important to us at the Wildlife Research Alliance. So important, in fact, that it's mentioned in our mission statement. Everyone likes to get paid, but you may not realize how important paid internships are to leveling the playing field for everyone who wants a career in conservation behavior.

You'd never guess there was a manatee trapped under this tree!

As a stranding biologist, responding to live and dead stranded sea turtles, manatees, dolphins, and whales on Florida's Gulf Coast, I got to experience the highest highs (releasing a manatee that I had helped rescue after he had been entangled in a floating Christmas tree for weeks, unable to eat and nearly losing his tail), and the lowest lows (watching a sea turtle take its last breath after being struck by a boat propeller). It was rewarding and exhausting, challenging and fun.


It was also REALLY white.


The only entry point into stranding work is to intern with a stranding response or marine animal research organization, and most of those internships are unpaid. I got my start with an unpaid Rescue Team internship at Clearwater Marine Aquarium in 2017. If you're lucky, you get accepted to an internship that allows you to have a job on the side (mine didn't). If you're really unlucky, you end up having to take an internship that actually charges their interns a fee. Often, the fee includes accommodation, and sometimes food, but many organizations list things like "tuition" and transportation to and from field sites, as if free labor wasn't enough. One two-week program in Mozambique offers a dormitory or tented accommodations with a shared bathroom facility and meals for $1900. Ouch.


Yours Truly, on my way to recover a deceased sea turtle on Christmas Day 2017

The tide is beginning to shift on this issue, but we are still a long way from fair pay for all internships in the stranding and marine animal research fields. You may find yourself thinking "why do interns need to be paid if they're gaining valuable experience?" That's a great question, and I would love to tell you.

Imagine you're a Black college student in the U.S. Perhaps you're lucky enough not to be one of the 21% of Black students who feels "frequently or occasionally" discriminated against in your program, so you're not up against that every day (though there is little chance you haven't faced some form of discrimination). You're twice as likely to be a caregiver for at least one family member, which means you probably need a job. In fact, you're also twice as likely to have a full-time job while completing your bachelor's degree courses.


Figure from the Lumina Foundation

Maybe you live in Ohio, and the full-time internship you desperately want to complete is in Florida. Your current job pays you $15/hr, and you work 35 hours per week while going to school. In order to continue supporting your family, you now need to figure out how to get a job that will pay you $525 per week while enabling you to devote 40 hours to your unpaid internship, and you have to pay for travel to Florida and find a place to live. Even an internship that paid a stipend of, let's say, $2,000 for the season wouldn't be enough to make this a realistic opportunity. The reality of the internship quickly slips through your fingers, and you're left trying to figure out how to get the necessary experience in your chosen field to be competitive when you graduate while still taking care of your family.

Even if you managed to make an unpaid internship work, the road ahead may be far from easy. Hopefully you are paired with a great mentor who teaches you what you need to learn while being sensitive to your needs. But what if you end up with a mentor who has never examined their own biases, and the effects of their microaggressions leads you to seek out help from human resources? Imagine your surprise when HR informs you that unpaid interns are not employees, therefore you are not protected by workplace discrimination laws.

This is not just a hypothetical. One study found that 60% of college students who wanted an internship but did not take one cited needing to work as their primary obstacle, and 33% cited insufficient internship pay. I have personally witnessed the fallout of the workplace discrimination issue, and it was heartbreaking.


Figure from Hora, Wolfgram, & Chen, 2019

Paid internships are not the only solution necessary to the racial disparity in conservation science. There are myriad systemic issues at play that keep this and other fields out of reach for marginalized communities. It is a piece of a larger puzzle, but it is an important one. Thankfully, the movement to do away with unpaid internships is gaining momentum.

In July of 2020, a petition was sent to the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM) requesting that the Society take a stance on the role of unpaid internships in perpetuating a lack of diversity in marine mammal science. While the SMM, unfortunately, has yet to make meaningful changes to their policies on this issue, many research organizations around the world signed the petition and started working toward ending unpaid internships. One exciting step forward in this fight came via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Notice of Funding Opportunity for the 2025 John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant. This federal grant is a staple of the marine mammal stranding community, providing over $75 million in grant funding since its inception in 2001. Each year, NOAA releases a set of priorities for the Prescott grant, encouraging applicants to apply for funding to address things like emerging diseases, critically endangered species, inter-agency collaboration, etc. For the first time, one such priority is paid internships, with the goal of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. Finding funding is the biggest challenge in the fight for paid internships, so the 2025 Prescott grant presents a HUGE opportunity for a number of marine mammal rescue and research institutions!

We are a long way from true equity in wildlife conservation, but the Wildlife Research Alliance is working hard to make strides in the right direction. We aim to be a leader in this fight, and I appreciate the opportunity to tell you more about this issue!

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