Resources

Below is a list of resources I have found helpful in my career. I hope that by compiling and sharing these links, these resources will reach at least one new person who may not have seen them otherwise. These are by no means comprehensive and reflect my experiences and biases.

1) Jobs, grad school, funding, and more: I often find myself sending these resources to students who are interested in graduate school and/or careers in conservation broadly.

2) Plastic pollution-related resources (coming soon!): These are a collection of resources I have come across or helped compile related to plastic pollution in some manner. If you end up using these resources in a scientific article, please be sure to cite the original creator.

Let me know what I am missing or if you spot broken links!

(Last updated February 6, 2025)

A birds eye view of desks and geometric windows in a library

Robarts Library, University of Toronto

Jobs, grad school, funding, and more!

  • Jobs - Environmental conservation/natural resources

    1. A weekly email list run by Seven Seas Media including marine conservation jobs. I have referred students to this listeserv who have actually found their next gig here!!!

    2. Schmidt Marine Job Board

    3. This is broader than marine conservation but Tech Jobs For Good has jobs related to topics in Environment, Climate Change, etc. + tech

    4. Natural Resources Job Board - hosted by Texas A&M, this job board focuses on ecology, biology, and conservation jobs. I landed a summer internship with the US Fish and Wildlife Service through a posting here during undergrad.

    5. Josh’s Water Jobs - water resource related jobs, internships, and some PhD opportunities

    Canadian-Focused Conservation Resources

    6. Good Work - hub for Canadian environmental/sustainability jobs

    7. ECO Canada - the Environmental Careers Organization (ECO) of Canada, includes professional certifications and training to support Canada’s environmental sector

    8. Work Cabin - wildlife/conservation jobs in Canada

  • Grad school/academic jobs

    Here are a few collaborative documents and listservs with academic job openings (2024-2025):

    1. EcoEvo Job Board - Ecology, evolutionary biology, and some environmental science job postings, from postdoc to faculty positions

    2. Earth Sciences Job List

    3. Academic Jobs Wiki - Updated less frequently but seems to have different jobs than the other two resources for a range of fields.

    Grad School/Academic Jobs/Conferences/Other Opportunities…

    4. Animal Behaviour Mailing list - Listserv often sharing PhD, postdoc, and conference opportunities (often in Europe).

    5. ECOLOG - Ecology focused listserv sharing graduate school opportunities, training courses, research experiences, and more.

    6. R-sig-ecology - Listserv focused on the use of R in ecology and environmental data analysis

  • Funding, scholarships, awards

    Here are a few resources:

    1. A list of funding scholarships and awards compiled by Dr. Jacobs

    2. This weekly email list run by Seven Seas Media highlights marine conservation related funding opportunities

    3. If you are looking for PhD funding and are a US citizen, I am often referring students to apply for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP for short). The Canadian equivalent is the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Canada Graduate Scholarships — Doctoral (CGS D) program. Both of these scholarships are incredibly competitive awards so don’t be discouraged if you don’t get one. Many researchers, including myself, go on to have fulfilling careers and never had these awards.

    4. NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) are great short-term research-intensive opportunities. I’ve worked with students through this program and wish I had applied for one as an undergraduate. Again, these are highly competitive and are by no means the only path to a research career.

  • Postdoctoral fellowships in conservation

    For PhDs who want to pursue applied conservation-oriented research, I highly recommend the:

    1. Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellowship (Canadian institutions)

    2. David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship, or the Smith Fellowship (US institutions)

    For both fellowships, fellows design their research in partnership with both academic and practitioner (e.g., NGOs, governments, etc.) mentors. Fellows receive bi-annual training at retreats in topics that allow them to grow as conservation leaders (e.g., science communication, conflict resolution). Fellows are awarded a stipend for their salary as well as research and travel funds.

    Full disclosure that I am a Liber Ero Fellow :)

  • Marine conservation listservs by OCTO

    The Open Communication for The Ocean (OCTO) runs the:

    1. Ocean Plastic listserv - contains new articles, news, funding sources, grad school opportunities related to plastic pollution broadly

    2. Marine Protected Areas resources

    3. Ocean Ecosystem Based Management resources

  • Thinking about grad school?

    Here is some advice by Dr. Johnsen that I found helpful when considering doing a PhD. It skews towards Biology, but I find it helpful across fields.

    I also find the resources compiled by Dr. Bennett’s lab/the Socio-Ecological Workshop incredibly helpful.

  • THANK YOU!

    Special shout out to those who have sent me resources and shared this page: Joshua Pickering and Eric Pallant.

Plastic pollution-related resources (coming soon!)