Based on this great blog by Lewis Spurgin, here are a few thoughts on the issue of unpaid internships in UK-based conservation organisations.

Unpaid internships are completely unacceptable for one simple reason: they mean that those who can afford it (or usually whose parents can) have a greater chance of getting experience and therefore a job. Even when accommodation is provided, usually parents end up backing their kids up. Mine certainly did and I’m very privileged for it.

Or we’re saying that people have to hold down a job while studying in order to save up enough money to be able to afford it for themselves. I’ve seen many friends do this and watched with admiration as they’ve combined either studying with a job, or one job on top of another.

Imagine a young person desperate for a career in conservation, extremely talented, but who takes care of their disabled, single parent and so can’t afford the money for an internship nor the time to get a job to pay for an internship themselves. Is that fair? This isn’t about people understanding that it’s hard before they go down this route, it’s also about injustices and barriers beyond people’s control that might hold them back.

Organisations like the RSPB are doing a great thing by providing free accommodation on nature reserves, but this doesn’t go far enough, and there’s no equivalent for the internships in their office-based positions.

But as long as society, not just conservation, continues down this route, we’re saying that people deserve jobs in conservation based on ability to pay, not merit. I want the conservation sector to be as strong as possible and nature needs that too – which means we need to select based on merit.

What’s more, because ability to pay is so important, this also reinforces the tendency for the conservation sector (again like so many others) to be dominated by middle-class, white, usually male staff.

This means that not only is it hugely under-representative but also means that the whole sector is skewed to a certain approach. For example, if more people from more economically deprived, inner-city backgrounds were able to get internships then jobs, perhaps urban nature would have been a higher priority sooner than now. And perhaps working with children in inner city schools would be receiving more funding.

I’m afraid that unpaid internships simply reinforce the existing injustices in our society, and surely conservation is working towards a world with fewer injustices, whether those affect people or nature.

That’s certainly the world I’m spending my life trying to build! I hope you’re with me.