I’ve been committed to conservation for as long as I can remember. I came to love nature and wildlife through a mixture of outdoor experiences, museums, and magazines, and over the years turned this passion into my career as well as my volunteering projects.
Conserving species + spaces in today’s world requires an understanding of species declines, habitat loss, climate change, human behaviour, and protected areas, just as a start. Conservation is incredibly complex, which is one of the reasons it often fails, or doesn’t succeed in exactly the way we’d hoped.
I learned a lot of conservation through my New Noah experience in Mauritius, where I spent time on Mauritian Wildlife Foundation projects while taking courses in project management, leadership, spatial analysis, conservation planning, and more. When I returned, I worked for almost four years in an innovative conservation partnership where we helped municipalities identify and conserve land within their jurisdictions. Much of this work centred around finding wetlands and shorelines which were important habitats for migratory birds. Migratory bird conservation is fascinating due to the connections between different habitat types, the need for often large land areas, and the huge variety of species with often slightly different ecological niches. I still maintain an active interest in protected area establishment and management, and this past summer worked with some great collaborators on a protected areas project. And of course I will never give up on my bird nerd nature, and am currently collaborating with Learn the Birds on some upcoming talks.
Much of my conservation work right now is through my role as President at Nature NL. Since we are a naturalist club and conservation charity all rolled into one, we have the freedom to pursue a variety of projects, as long as they fit within our mission. We take on everything from public cleanups to wildlife identification workshops to hikes to general environmental awareness (climate change, endangered species, oil spills, whale rescue, etc etc) extending all the way up to federal advocacy for nature. Last year I was pleased to represent Nature NL in meetings on Parliament Hill, where I learned how to engage with our elected representatives and federal leaders on nature issues. Politicians don’t have a lot of time and are constantly pulled in different directions; hearing from real people who care about conservation is important.
I also serve on the Board of Directors at Wildlife Habitat Canada, where we have the wonderful job of supporting conservation projects across the country and promoting outdoor recreation. I enjoy this type of work because I’m interested in how conservation actually gets accomplished – what gets funded, why, where, and how. If you can learn enough about conservation funding, you will always find a way to get your conservation projects off the ground 🙂
There are many ways to get involved in conservation; consider donating your time to your local naturalist club, an environmental charity, or watershed organization near you. Often these groups are eager to have committed, passionate people to help them run the operations and take on new and exciting projects.
