Big, bold and boreal: Once complete, this will be Canada’s largest private conservation project
Boreal Wildlands, ON (Photo by NCC)
Spring is unfurling across the country, and those who know me know I love my birds. Birdwatching is great in any season, but I start to get a specific set of goosebumps when I hear the first sounds of migratory birds returning from the south in...
A Canadian winter warrior
Snowy owl (Photo by Gregg McLachlan)
A few winters back, during the continued irruption of snowy owls into southern Ontario, I was lucky enough to come across a “snowy hot spot” just 25 minutes from my home in Guelph, Ontario. My husband and I have passed many Sundays...
Hugging trees
Anwar Knight and I hugging a black oak tree in High Park. (Photo courtesy of Anwar Knight)
I’m walking along a well-beaten dirt path in a favourite forest. The brilliant early fall sunshine streams through the leaves, which are gradually dimming from their vibrant summer green to hues of yellow, gold and the first tinges of red. A...
My bucket list adventure in the Galapagos Islands
Kristyn Ferguson in the Galapagos Islands (Photo by Jeff Verberne)
For many biologists, the Galapagos Islands are usually near the top of their list of places to see in this lifetime. On my bucket list they were annotated with an “!”. When my mentor and good friend James Duncan passed away suddenly in...
The boreal forests of Wilson Island
Wilson Island, ON (Photo by NCC)
It was time to do a deep dive into the boreal forests of Wilson Island, near the north shore of Lake Superior. The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) acquired these amazing 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) in 2008, and it was time to conduct an...
Emerald in the rough
Hine's emerald dragonfly at Minesing Wetlands, ON (Photo by Chris Evans)
Deep in the heart of the Minesing Wetlands, southern Ontario’s third-largest wetland system, lives a mysterious creature. It is thought to inhabit only 50 distinct locations in the entire world, most of which are concentrated around the...
Rescuing roadside reptiles
Snapping turtle crossing the road, ON (Photo by NCC)
It was a warm, late-June evening, while driving on a backroad near my home in Guelph, Ontario, when I saw a familiar sight up ahead: a car pulled off to the side of the road, at least one human standing on the road, looking concerned, and the dome...
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...
Feeling happy about conservation
Kristyn Ferguson, spring monitoring, ON (Photo by NCC)
I was 21 years old, and I was going to save the world, starting with one particular forest. In 2004, during my third year of an undergrad degree at the University of Guelph, I took a course called "Problem-solving in Environmental Biology." My...
Poems for Trees: Wilson Island
Wilson Island's cobble shores, Ontario (Photo by Michelle Derosier, Thunderstone Pictures)
In August 2011 I visited the Wilson Island Archipelago with Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) staff Brenda Van Sleeuwen and former NCCer Laura Mousseau, along with Pays Plat First Nation seasonal employees Gary Bouchard and Andrew Wynne. Our goal...
