How to Conserve Conservationists

By Jessie Panazzolo

How to conserve conservationists is an autobiographical journey through Jessie Panazzolo's experience in founding a global community of budding and burnt out conservationists. Sharing her personal stories, research and observations, she shares some care instructions with the reader to help them look after the conservationists in their lives. A thought-provoking read about language, relationships and mental health and how these topics impact the people who conserve our natural world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Sep 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649692733

Book preview

The art of talking to a conservationist 

Weirdly enough, during the past decade or so that I was working on conservation projects, I never once considered the language that others used to talk to myself or others in the field. I have only started to realise the importance of language since individuals have been interviewing me about my work or from reading books about more people-centric aspects of conservation. These factors combined with reading the stories from my community, and talking to the members individually, has led me to realise the importance of how we speak to people invested in the environmental movement and conservation industry.

I was interviewed for the Nightlife program on ABC radio about Lonely Conservationists when the very last question caught me by surprise. The host asked me what the future looked like for my community and what everyone could expect. I started off by explaining how challenging it is to solve all of the issues impacting conservationists on my own, especially when this is a new path that has yet to be forged. I was promptly cut off and the interview ended before I could go on to say what projects I was working on. I sat with the discomfort of this question for some time and thought about how I was expected to wrap up my experiences in a tight bow of trying to navigate a systemic issue as just one person. I tried to grapple with why I felt guilty about my response even though the issue of conservationists being mistreated and underpaid obviously isn’t a simple issue to fix. To be honest I don’t even know if this is an issue I can fix on my own.

I confronted this same question again weeks later after a Lonely Conservationist had sent me some questions that he wanted to ask me on his podcast, and there it was again. The very last question sitting there and haunting me. To my surprise, my fingers started typing a response faster than my brain could decide to reply and I started to express my discomfort for that question.

It is important to understand how much pressure conservationists and environmentalists put on themselves to keep making strides to save their home planet. I cannot stress enough how the self-imposed pressure to achieve perfection revels in the minds of most eco-conscious humans out there. We are often experiencing bouts of burnout, exhaustion and are sometimes even nearing the cusp of apathy from how much we try to do to protect our planet as dedicated and resilient individuals. To ask what the future of our work entails suggests that you are not content with how it is now. It suggests, even indirectly or unintentionally that what we are doing needs to be improved, changed, bigger or