Field Inclusive, Inc.

Experience Reflection: Mel Baldino

“As a queer, chronically ill woman, I frequently had to claw my way into field technician jobs, fighting to prove that I deserved experiences that able bodied men were given automatically. For years, I put myself in dangerous situations where I buried my queer identity and hurt my body to gain skills and research positions knowing it was necessary to prepare me to protect ecosystems for future generations. Once those sacrifices paid off and earned me admittance to my graduate program, I promised myself that I would actively work to make fieldwork more accessible and safer in my own lab and in the field as a whole.”

BY MEL BALDINO

I often find myself telling colleagues that I am a field ecologist despite my formative field experiences, not because of them. Each exciting, unique experience listed on my CV from my early years has a hidden log of injuries, harassment, and inequity that should have convinced me to leave field ecology all together. This was especially evident in the jobs I struggled to join in my college and gap years. While backpacking through the Gabonese rain forest following elephants, I was battered by rough conditions, threatened by elephants and poachers alike, hid aspects of my identity that were locally criminalized, and suffered through months of sexual harassment from my male colleagues who didn’t believe science was “women’s work.” Whether I was working in coral reefs, high desert sage brush, agricultural fields, or wetlands, I knew I was working harder than others to achieve my dream of studying ecosystems while fully immersed within them. As a queer, chronically ill woman, I frequently had to claw my way into field technician jobs, fighting to prove that I deserved experiences that able bodied men were given automatically. For years, I put myself in dangerous situations where I buried my queer identity and hurt my body to gain skills and research positions knowing it was necessary to prepare me to protect ecosystems for future generations. Once those sacrifices paid off and earned me admittance to my graduate program, I promised myself that I would actively work to make fieldwork more accessible and safer in my own lab and in the field as a whole.

My dissertation research has allowed me to show a proof of concept for my dream of a better future, one where future generations of young scientists aren’t scared out of a career in field ecology due to sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, or socioeconomic inequity. I study the potential for carbon-restored wetlands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to provide multiple benefits, such as biodiversity support and landscape connectivity, while informing future restoration practices. In weekly field surveys, I arrive to my sites before sunrise, conduct avian point counts where we note every bird we see or hear, and manage a variety of field equipment including bioacoustics monitor stations and camera traps. This work could be done by myself alone, but my history as a young, mistreated field ecologist has made it of the utmost importance that I provide an accessible, safe way for undergraduate students to trial fieldwork on my project regardless of their background and past experiences.

I have been lucky enough to mentor 27 undergraduate students so far, including ten since receiving my Field Inclusive Research Award. My students have identified across the gender and sexuality spectrums and hold a variety of racial identities. Many have been California residents who have never had the opportunity to explore their local ecosystems while others are immigrants from as far as German and South Korea. Our crews often include first generation students, non-traditional students, transfer students, student parents, and students joining academia after military service. To demonstrate these commitments, we work with the Sponsored Projects for Undergraduate Research program at UC Berkeley, which prioritizes providing first time research experiences to students with no relevant background or skills yet. I ensure that our work is accessible to all students by keeping the manual labor to a minimum, allocating college credit for all work completed, providing all required gear and transportation to and from the field sites, and allowing all crew members equal veto power for tasks and situations that feel unsafe.

By receiving the Field Inclusive Research Award, I have been able to fund additional research trips over this past summer to the Delta, where I introduced new field ecologists to their first experiences collecting data outside of a lab. We broke down socioeconomic barriers by teaching the students to fly our drone to map the wetlands and dispersing materials that are inaccessible to lower income students to those who
were interested in pursuing a Part 107 Drone Pilot’s License. Many of my students were able to explore a budding love for birding through our point counts and lessons on bird identification, a hobby they had avoided due to inaccessibility and stereotypes about the competitiveness and hostility of the birding community.

My dissertation research program is just the beginning for my dream of a more inclusive field. As I continue improving wetland restoration practices through remote sensing and place-based research, I will invite students of all backgrounds and experience levels to experience what field ecology can be: inspirational, safe, grounded research where we can touch and see the ecosystem we long to protect. My current research is proof that if we are intentional and open about who we include in our science, we can create a better future for us and the environment.