Women in conservation: Kendra Pauley
Kendra at Muskoka, Ontario (Photo courtesy of Kendra Pauley)
In honour of International Women’s Day (March 8), we’re celebrating six female staff members at the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) who are working to create a stronger future for Canada’s landscapes. Growing up in rural...
Ten tips for finding a job in conservation
Volunteer measures tree root collar diameter with calliper. (Photo by NCC)
There’s a lot I love about my job at the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). Working on endangered species, landscape planning and protecting some of Canada’s most important habitats is not a bad way to spend the day. I also like...
How a hidden forest valley is a big opportunity for conservation
Photo assignment for NCC is a journey into a pristine habitat that will make a difference in southwestern Ontario. (Photo by Gregg McLachlan)
Towering hemlocks reaching for the sky. A deep and rugged valley covered with ferns. A coldwater stream flowing over and under moss-covered fallen pine trunks. Just the thought of these scenes makes my mind wander yet again to northern...
The incredible migration at Johnson's Mills Shorebird Reserve
Semipalmated sandpiper (Photo by NCC)
From late July to mid-August, the scene at the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC’s) Johnson’s Mills Shorebird Reserve on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick is awe-inspiring. There are days when as many as 140,000 semipalmated...
Biomimicry: Every step is a story
A bighorn sheep on Luxor Linkage conservation area (Photo by Bonnie-Lou Ferris)
When I first learned about biomimicry, I was in a math and poetry class at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was 2004, and while the professor didn’t necessarily talk about the term “biomimicry,” he introduced us...
Kick-start your conservation career by interning
NCC conservation intern monitoring plant communities (Photo by NCC)
If you’re close to graduating from a post-secondary institution, you may have already started to think about applying for jobs related to your field of study. While school is an excellent place to expand your general knowledge, not all...
Dinosaurs to the rescue! How paleontology can inform us about the necessity of conservation
A large hadrosaur femur (duckbilled dinosaur thighbone) discovered near a NCC property in Alberta. (Photo by François Therrien)
Dinosaurs are more than just scary monsters featured in Hollywood blockbuster movies; they’re the poster children for the science of paleontology, and one of the best subjects to educate the general public about natural history. Dinosaurs...
Magic shrubs: How to master live staking
Willow live stakes (Photo by NCC)
I remember raising my eyebrows skeptically when my colleagues from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority told me that we were going to be cutting branches off of shrubs and hammering them into the ground along the Nottawasaga River to...
Searching for worms in Ontario’s restored tall grass prairie
Ontario’s largest exotic earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris. (Photo by Heather Cray)
Looking across a beautiful stretch of native tall grass prairie in its full glory, the first thing that might strike you is, well, the grass; big bluestem, switchgrass, Indian grass, all of them might reach up to or above eye level. Then there are...
Growing the idea to connect Canadians to nature
Plants from Great Marram Grass Plug Plant CV event on PEI (Photo by Mike Dembeck)
Every so often, a big idea emerges from a smaller one and, in the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC’s) case, it can turn into something larger than imagined. This is exactly what happened for NCC’s Conservation Volunteers...
