A guide to juggling fieldwork and pregnancy

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Sandra Binning observes damselfishes sheltering among the coral
Marine ecologist Sandra Binning recommends that researchers who are pregnant take a few extra steps of preparation before going out into the field.Credit: Dominique Roche

Conservation biologist Amy Dickman had built her career around remote fieldwork in Namibia and Tanzania — extended trips that included close run-ins with wild animals. She had encountered venomous cobras in toilets and bread bins. She had been charged by elephants. And she had been attacked by a cheetah. During her first expedition to Tanzania in 2004, a lion sniffed at her tent and eventually fell asleep on top of it, trapping her arm beneath its body.

The likelihood of such events — both thrilling and terrifying — was high in her work, which aimed to reduce conflicts between humans and carnivores. So when Dickman learnt in 2013 that she was pregnant, it felt at first as if she might be risking a huge career setback.

She worried that the pregnancy would interfere with her usual field trips to the African wilderness, where she often spent eight months at a stretch doing research that has helped to reduce killings of carnivores by 80% (see go.nature.com/2guyn1h); it has also led to multiple career and funding awards and some 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals. And she fretted that colleagues, superiors and others might perceive her as professionally weaker — although everyone, including her university, was supportive.