How to build a conservation consulting career in a tough job market

Jun 10 / Adam Barlow

Conservation employment is contracting at the same time that demand for conservation expertise is growing. Job postings fell nearly 30 percent in 2025 and competition for remaining roles increased sharply, while the environmental consulting market is forecast to exceed $65 billion by 2031. The conservationists capturing that opportunity are the ones who have learned how to operate as consultants: how to assess the market, define what they offer, price their work, attract the right clients, and deliver in ways that build lasting trust and reputation. These are learnable skills, and Consulting for Wildlife Conservation is a certified online course built to teach them.

Source: WildTeam. (2026). Consulting for Wildlife Conservation v1. WildTeam UK, Cumbria, UK.

All WildTeam best practices are grounded in an extensive review of the relevant scientific and professional literature and are peer-reviewed by conservation experts from across the sector to ensure accuracy, practicality, and global applicability.

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Why the conservation job market is getting harder
Why the consulting market is growing at the same time
Who is capturing the consulting opportunity
What separates consultants who thrive from those who struggle
How the course addresses this gap
Sources
FAQ

If you have tried to break into conservation in the last few years, the numbers confirm what you have probably already experienced. Research published by Mongabay found that 94 percent of surveyed conservationists said the job market had gotten tougher, with many young professionals stuck in full-time unpaid internships or long-term volunteering just to stay visible to employers (Askew, cited in Mongabay, 2017). A study in Conservation Biology, also reported by Mongabay, found that intense competition, a flood of unpaid internships, a prevalence of short-term work, and high student debt defined the experience of young conservationists trying to enter the sector (Lucas and Gora, cited in Mongabay, 2018).

That was before 2025, when the market deteriorated sharply. Conservation job postings fell 29.4 percent year on year between March and September 2025, following a stable 2024 in which listings had grown. Paid internships dropped 43.8 percent. Permanent roles fell 32.8 percent (Works for Nature, 2025).

The competition picture is even starker. As jobs disappeared, the number of people chasing them rose. The jobseekers-per-job ratio increased 40 percent over the same period, rising from 84 jobseekers per opening in 2024 to 117 in 2025 (Works for Nature, 2025). A survey of 337 conservation employers found that 42 percent expected to hire fewer people for the rest of the year, citing reduced or uncertain funding, rising costs, and leadership caution as the primary reasons (National Parks Traveler, 2025).

The employed market is not recovering in the short term. For conservationists who want to keep doing conservation work, waiting for a permanent role to appear is an increasingly fragile strategy.

While the employed market contracts, demand for conservation expertise delivered through consulting is expanding, and the drivers are structural rather than temporary. The environmental consulting market was valued at over $46 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach more than $65 billion by 2031 (Mordor Intelligence, 2026). Several forces are pushing that growth simultaneously.

Biodiversity commitments are creating compliance demand. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework commits governments to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030. Meeting that commitment requires technical expertise at country level, and most governments do not have it permanently employed. They commission it.

Corporate nature reporting is becoming mandatory. Frameworks including the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures are requiring businesses to assess and disclose their nature-related impacts. In 2025, 53 percent of pro-ESG investors were requesting TNFD or biodiversity information from the organisations they funded, up sharply from 29 percent the year before (Malk Partners, 2025). Every one of those disclosure requirements needs someone with real conservation knowledge to fulfil it.

NGOs are outsourcing specialist work. With nations facing financial and political pressures, governments are increasingly transferring the management of protected areas to NGOs and private organisations (ScienceDaily, 2024), which in turn need to plug specialist gaps through short-term expertise rather than growing permanent headcount.

The result is a growing market for conservation knowledge delivered on a consultancy basis. Analysts tracking biodiversity markets have noted that the only for-profit players thriving right now are the consultancies, ahead of venture-backed nature tech startups and carbon credit platforms (Bloom Labs, 2025).

The conservationists building sustainable consulting practices are the ones who have learned how to operate as consultants. They have worked out what they offer and to whom. They know which part of the market their skills fit, what clients in that space are willing to pay, and how to make themselves visible before a contract comes up. They deliver work in ways that build trust and bring clients back.

None of this is taught on ecology degrees or conservation master's programmes. Most people learn it through trial and error, or they do not learn it at all. The result is that technically excellent conservationists take on the wrong work, price themselves poorly, and find themselves running a consultancy on effort alone rather than on a well-designed approach.

The problems that hold conservation consultants back are consistent across the sector. The consultants who struggle are the ones who have not worked out how to position themselves, who say yes to the wrong work, who undercharge and over-deliver without a plan, or who let a difficult client dynamic derail a project. These are failures of consultancy craft, not conservation ability (WildTeam, 2026).

That craft covers a specific set of skills:

Market assessment. Understanding which clients need your expertise, what the market will bear, and where the real opportunities are for someone with your specific background.
Value proposition and positioning. Defining what you offer clearly enough that the right clients recognise it, and building a professional profile that attracts the work you actually want to do.
Lead generation. Finding opportunities through networking, thought leadership, and proactive searching rather than waiting for work to arrive.
Client selection and conversion. Identifying which prospects are worth pursuing, how to approach initial conversations, and how to move from interest to a clear and contracted agreement.
Delivery and trust building. Providing a consultancy experience that meets client expectations, documents the work properly, and leaves clients better equipped to act independently rather than dependent on continued input.
Scaling. Knowing when and how to bring in associates or subcontractors, and how to develop a practice that does not depend entirely on your own available hours.

Consulting for Wildlife Conservation is a certified online course built for conservationists who want to do consulting work well. It is suitable for aspiring consultants considering a move into independent practice, practising consultants who want a structured framework to sharpen their approach, conservation professionals in employed roles who carry out consultancy-style work as part of their job, and conservation organisations developing or supporting a network of consultants (WildTeam, 2026).

The course works through each stage of building and running a consultancy: assessing market opportunities, crafting a value proposition and professional profile, generating leads, converting prospects into clients, delivering work that builds lasting trust, and scaling up over time. It leads to certification, and participants who pass the exam are added to WildTeam's global conservation skills directory.

The course sits within WildTeam's broader training platform, which has trained practitioners from over 100 countries, including staff from WWF, WCS, and TNC.

Bloom Labs (2025). Biodiversity markets: reviewing 2024 and looking into 2025. https://newsletter.bloomlabs.earth/p/biodiversity-markets-reviewing-2024
Malk Partners (2025). Five trends shaping biodiversity and natural capital in private markets. https://malk.com/five-trends-shaping-biodiversity-natural-capital-in-private-markets/
Mongabay (2017). A rich person's profession? Young conservationists struggle to make it. https://news.mongabay.com/2017/08/a-rich-persons-profession-young-conservationists-struggle-to-make-it/
Mongabay (2018). Not all doom and gloom: Q&A with conservation job market researchers. https://news.mongabay.com/2018/06/not-all-doom-and-gloom-qa-with-conservation-job-market-researchers/
Mordor Intelligence (2026). Environmental consulting market size and growth to 2031. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/environmental-consulting-market
National Parks Traveler (2025). Analysis of conservation job postings shows significant decrease during 2025. https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/11/analysis-conservation-job-postings-shows-significant-decrease-during-2025
ScienceDaily (2024). Outsourcing conservation in Africa. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240726193202.htm
WildTeam (2026). Consulting for Wildlife Conservation. https://training.wildteam.org.uk/course/consulting-for-wildlife-conservation
Works for Nature (2025). Conservation jobs fall sharply in 2025. https://worksfornature.org/article/falls-sharply-in-2025

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The course is designed for practitioners at all stages, including those already taking on consulting work who want a more deliberate framework for growing it. Many experienced consultants find the sections on market positioning, client selection, and scaling the most useful.

Many conservation grants allow capacity building and professional development as eligible costs. The course leads to verifiable certification, which makes it straightforward to describe as a measurable professional development activity. Contact WildTeam at training.wildteam.org.uk to confirm the details before including it in a budget.

Consulting for Wildlife Conservation sits alongside WildTeam's vocational training in project management, project planning, grant writing, stakeholder engagement, and monitoring and evaluation. The annual membership covers all of these, and completing the full suite leads to certification as a Wildlife Conservation Professional.

The 2025 data reflect a specific combination of funding pressures and political uncertainty that particularly affected US federal conservation employment. The global picture is more varied. The structural trend toward shorter-term contracts, specialist outsourcing, and consulting-based delivery of conservation work is real and long-running. The 2025 dip in permanent roles sharpened a shift that was already underway.

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