Beth McLarnon (Photo courtesy Beth McLarnon)
Beth McLarnon
Beth Mclarnon is the regional conservation operations manager for the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) in Alberta. Her job revolves around data, planning, efficiencies and improvements. Her goals are to make conservation processes efficient, data that is up to date and ready for reporting, and a working management system that runs smoothly.
In summer, she spends time in the field collecting data at NCC’s newest properties; in fall, she works on completing reports and processing change; over the winter, she works on data and report management; and in the spring, she gears up for the summer with intern hiring.
Beth joined NCC in November 2018. She had been aware of NCC since she started working as a biologist. She was attracted to working with an organization that values land conservation and preservation as one of its top priorities.
Beth has a degree in zoology from the University of Laurentian in Sudbury, Ontario. As a new biologist, she spent time working on different contracts involving various species. Her first field experience was working in the sub-Arctic, collecting frog tissue samples for genetic analyses. This turned out to be an amazing and challenging experience with the highlight being encountering a polar bear that was within 50 metres of where she was walking. She also spent time at Algonquin Park working with newly hatched painted turtles and Blanding’s turtles.
Beth moved to Alberta in 2013 to begin a position with Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI), which completes biodiversity studies throughout Alberta every year. She started with ABMI as a summer field technologist in 2012 and loved the program and Alberta so much she decided to make a permanent move. She worked as the logistics coordinator and was responsible for all the equipment (enough to outfit up to 60 field technologists), the remote access field crews (who worked out of a helicopter all summer), and helped schedule the field season. She also spent a large amount of the winter outside performing field work throughout Alberta, setting up wildlife cameras and bird recording devices.
When Beth first came to Alberta, she was blown away by how amazing the mountains were and the number of activities she can enjoy all year round. She grew up skiing, hiking and camping, but the mountains have given her a greater passion to get out and explore every chance she gets and become more experienced in all three activities.
