Leave only footprints: Minimizing your impact in nature
Grace and Pepper exploring the winter wonderland (Photo by NCC)
Nature has been my greatest teacher. As a child growing up in the semi-desert of the Okanagan in British Columbia, I learned not to touch prickly pear, which plants smelled the most like sage and to move away from the warning rattle of a...
Why Canada matters on World Wetlands Day
Wetlands in the Marion Creek Benchlands, British Columbia (Photo by Tim Ennis/NCC)
While other nations have picked wetland wildlife, such as Finland’s whooper swan or Pakistan’s Indus crocodile, to represent their country, Canada is the only country in the world that has selected a wetland engineer as its national...
Uncovering the magic of winter wildlife
Meeting Lake 03, SK (Photo by NCC)
While attending college in Winnipeg, my classmate and I used to walk north from the campus at the corner of Shaftesbury and Grant streets to explore the different sections of Assiniboine Park. As the school year was between September and April,...
Natural Continuities: Connecting to nature through photography
Looking out over a pond at the MacMillan Nature Preserve. (Photo by Sara Schiavello)
This month, our class from Mr. Senisi’s Grade 12 photography class at St. Jean de Brebeuf Catholic High School in Woodbridge, Ontario, hosted a photography exhibit called Natural Continuities: A Photography Exhibit in Honour of Lyn...
From woodsman to grandsons to Canadians
Alan Bonnyman and his two sons (Photo by Mike Dembeck)
Whether they live in big cities or small villages, Canadians often see their identity as defined by nature: by our dramatic seasons, by the sheer size of our country and by living near oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains, prairies and forests. This...
The silence of the hillsides
Fort Ellice, Riding Mountain (Photo by NCC)
For the past six months, I’ve worked as an assistant conservation biologist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) in Riding Mountain Natural Area in western Manitoba. I found that a summer in the area challenged me to reconsider how I...
Greenspace makes for great headspace
Hikers in Happy Valley Forest, ON (Photo by NCC)
The natural world has always been my fall-back position. Whenever life got too busy, scary or stressful or even when it was at its most fulfilling, I seemed to want, in fact to need, to find some green space to process it all, for a while. As a...
Discovering the natural wonders of Manitoba
Fort Ellice, Riding Mountain (Photo by NCC)
I grew up in southwestern Manitoba, living only a few minutes from both the American and Saskatchewan borders, and I have remained in the province while completing my undergraduate and graduate degrees. In the past year, I spent a lot of time...
Canada's bats in crisis
Little brown myotis (Photo by Brock Fenton)
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a cloud of little brown myotis bats flying in broad daylight at the coldest time of the year in January. There was something vaguely disturbing and peculiar about seeing them fluttering around against a...
Top 10 blog posts of 2016
Snow forest on Darkwoods, BC (Photo by NCC)
This past year, Land Lines published content that celebrated the wonders of the world around us. From adventures on high mountain tops to exploring coastal habitats in Atlantic Canada, stories have come in from Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC)...
