Thank you - great question

Pros: It's a challenging, usually very active job that involves spending time out of doors in nature with animals.  It's also a people job.  You meet all kinds with different experiences, all of whom are working toward the same thing: conserving wildlife.  It's also the type of work that requires you to keep learning, researching new things.

Cons: It's not a job you can do anywhere, and there are relatively few paid jobs in this profession compared to many others.  It's not usually high paying, either.  Most of us find the job and move to the place whereever it happens to be; it's very difficult to work in this field by choosing where you want to live, raise a family, etc.  The hours are long, too.  The animals don't know it's a holiday or a weekend.  Additionally, as with any form of medical profession, there is trauma, pain, and death involved.  Sometimes in wildlife medicine vets are faced with difficult decisions like euthanizing animals in order to put them out of misery, control overpopulation, or get samples to diagnose diseases that could potentially harm more animals, or people.  Finally, as the world's resources continue to be rapidly consumed by humans, it can be a depressing job. 

For me, personally, I am an optimist. So I would put this part of the answer back up into the "Pro" section.  The job allows you to take an active role in the ongoing effort to conserve the planet.

I believe that we can stop the loss of species and the destruction of habitats if we do two things--and do them well.  First, we need to fully incorporate the needs of humans into our conservation plans for wildlife and wild places, and do this early enough in the process to bring together the right mix of experts.  Conservation is a dynamic process that requires problem solving.  We need multidisciplinary teams to find solutions .  Second, we need to accept the fact that nothing is "wild" in the pristine sense of the world. The good news is that we can manage places "as wild," before they are too far gone, by using our exceptional primate brains.