As part of International Day Women and Girls in Science, we're profiling several RSPB women scientists from our Centre for Conservation Science, asking them what they do, how they got their current jobs and for any tips they have for aspiring scientists.
Dr Fiona Sanderson is a Senior Conservation Scientist working in our International Research Section. Here's what she had to say:
My work includes trying to understand the impact of international policy instruments such as the European Union Nature Directives and REDD, and the impact of tropical agriculture, particularly cocoa, on birds and other biodiversity. In practice this means I spend some time managing people and projects, quite a lot of time interrogating large datasets for patterns in bird populations in relation to policy-driven land use, and small amounts of time in exciting and exotic places like Sierra Leonean rainforests. It’s all good.
Career history
I don’t have any science A-levels, unless you count geography (some do; some don’t). When studying geography at A-level and reading about conservation in my spare time, I realised I wanted to become a conservationist – my plan up to that point was to become a writer.
I took a four-year degree in Zoology at Glasgow so that I could transfer into science without the A-levels needed for a three-year course at an English university. After an MSc in Ecology, spells counting penguins in Australia and Manx shearwaters on Skomer Island, my first long-term contract was as a Research Officer at the British Trust for Ornithology.
I left that for a PhD in population ecology and monitoring of the hazel dormouse, before going back to bird research for the International Research Section at the RSPB. I’ve been here ever since.
What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
I have two daughters and I know it's a cliché, but managing a young family and a career is not easy. I was on a long-term contract when I became pregnant with my first daughter, was ill for some of the pregnancy and quite worried about my future career. I was lucky enough to be offered a permanent contract just before I went on maternity leave, and the RSPB were happy for me to come back part-time.
It does feel challenging initially trying to keep up with your research field whilst working part-time and parenting, and I could not have managed without a supportive line manager. It was more unusual then to be a mother, a scientist and working part-time – there weren’t any in the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science when I first went on maternity leave.
Now it’s more common, which is great to see. As well being the right thing to do, it just makes good business sense, because if scientific employers don’t support parents sufficiently, they don’t have the opportunity to draw from the widest pool of talent available to them.
Can you tell us your proudest science achievement?
Back in 2015 I was researching the population trends of EU breeding birds which are protected under EU Nature legislation, compared to those which are not. EU policy might sound excruciatingly dull, but international nature legislation is potentially incredibly powerful for protecting wildlife, which doesn’t recognise international borders.
Our work showed that birds protected under EU nature legislation have more positive population trends, and that this remains true even for species you would have expected to decline under climate change – so nature legislation, probably by creating protected areas, can mitigate the impact of climate change.
This is a really hopeful conservation message and helped provide evidence to support the RSPB and BirdLife International campaigns to retain the EU Nature Directives at a time when they were under threat.
The European Commission could have decided to weaken them, but instead they decided to retain the legislation and strengthen its implementation. I’m really proud to have been able to provide evidence to support such an important policy instrument for conservation.
I particularly like the fact that this kind of work involves thousands of volunteers across the continent who go out and count birds at weekends. I’ve worked with these citizen scientists throughout my career, and the amount and quality of data these armies of people can collect is astoundingly powerful in enabling us to detect large-scale patterns in wildlife populations.
What are your top tips for an aspiring scientist?
Watch out for Imposter Syndrome! This is just a fancy name for the feeling that you’re not good enough, despite being successful, and that you’re about to get found out.
Self-reporting suggests that the majority of female scientists, and a lot of male scientists, experience this at some point in their career. It sounds really obvious, but I found it useful to learn quite early in my career that thinking this way is very common, and feeling like an impostor does not mean you are one.
Are there any female scientists you aspire to/follow on twitter/wish to be more like?
I really admire my ex-colleague, Annika Hillers, who is now Liberia Country Director of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation.
Annika is a brilliant field scientist – she’s a world expert on West African amphibians. Fieldwork conditions in West Africa are tough and there’s no way I could do the kind of work Annika has done there! She did an incredible job building the capacity of researchers in Sierra Leone.
Building the skills of scientists in countries that have high biodiversity but low financial resources is obviously fundamental for effective global conservation – and she set up an educational NGO for Sierra Leonean children. On top of all this, she’s also a kind and generous person.
Inspired by Fiona? Why not read our other profiles of female RSPB Scientists?