Anne Robertson (Photo by Rose-Marie Burke)

Anne Robertson

An educator, passionate naturalist, community leader in conservation and proud member of NCC Protectors Club, Anne Robertson helps people connect with nature on a number of fronts.

Anne volunteers as a stewardship representative for a number of NCC properties. She’s been monitoring some properties for as many as 10 continuous years, noting changes and filling out monitoring forms detailing evidence of vehicles, camping, logging and buildings. Thankfully, there is rarely any unnatural activity, so it’s often simply a very nice walk.

In addition to her fantastic work with NCC, Anne sits on the executive of the Kingston Field Naturalists (KFN) and on the board of the Land Conservancy for Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington. “The most important things in my life are natural history education and land protection in all the forms they can take,” Anne explains of her ardent commitment to wildlife conservation.

And Anne’s enthusiasm is contagious, as the turn-out a recent event shows. Anne coordinated the 10th annual KFN BioBlitz near Kingston in June 2008 on an NCC property at Elbow Lake. Over a 24 hour period, experts and volunteers of all ages counted 816 species on the property. That’s more than twice their goal of 400! “It’s good to get people out there connecting with nature and seeing what can be done for the environment,” says Anne. She has organized regular initiatives such as nest box cleanups, marsh monitoring projects and habitat and species preservation projects, which help to get kids of all ages involved. “Show them a little fascinating nature and they’ll get hooked,” adds this passionate teacher and volunteer.