LOS FRESNOS — Texas isn’t Utah — not enough mountains — but it’s still been pretty sweet for Hailey Brown.
Brown, an intern at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge from Logan, Utah, said after graduation from Brigham Young University she worked as a museum educator and wanted to continue her career arc by building on that foundation.
“I found out I really liked working with people. I liked teaching them about wildlife and about conservation,” Brown said. “So I was looking for something a little more ‘people-teaching’ and I saw a posting for this internship down here in Texas and I said, ‘Texas sounds great — sure, why not?’
“I have a heart of adventure inside.”
Brown arrived at Laguna Atascosa last September and has worked with Marion Mason, lead ranger at the refuge, ever since.
She graduated from Brigham Young with a degree in wildlands and wildlife conservation.
“It’s very much like helping you become more like a wildlife biologist, I guess,” she recalls. “It was a lot of land management, a lot was about if you were managing cattle, as well as learning about wild animals, mammalogy, ornithology.”
And that heart of adventure received some training, too.
“One of my professors did research every summer in Alaska on bears,” Brown said. “So we had a class on wildlife techniques and investigation, so I would learn how to anesthetize a bear, just a lot of different, crazy classes that were more fun than sitting down and doing some math.”
Brown says college, and her time in the working world afterward, taught her a more sophisticated way of thinking about wildlife conservation and how it must be pursued as a career.
“Going into college, I was like, I want a job where I can work with animals, because I like animals, and I want to make the world a better place,” Brown says.
“But I learned there’s a lot more of the nitty-gritty involved, a lot more of the administrative kind of thing, a lot of behind-the-scenes paperwork — especially with the federal government.”
Along with this new knowledge, Brown says she also has strengthened her skills, particularly as an educator.
As for advice for any like-minded high school student with a love for animals and the outdoors, Brown says be flexible but stay determined.
“Don’t get stuck in something because you’re already there,” she says. “My hope is I can find a job doing something that I love, and I’ve never given that up.
“Even though it would be so much easier to go be a nurse, to go open a shop somewhere, this isn’t just getting from A-to-B-to-C,” she says.
“There are so many options,” she says. “If you want to get there, it’s going to take time, but I do believe by working you can get there.”
