In 2014, Richard joined the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) as Stewardship Coordinator for the Canadian Rocky Mountains program based in Invermere.
The position ensures that all fee simple and conservation covenant lands are monitored and managed in accordance with NCC’s policies, procedures, standards and guidelines. Richard’s work in the field work involves conducting ecological inventories on newly acquired properties, monitoring conservation covenants, communicating with landowners and public, identifying invasive species, planning ecosystem restoration, and wetland health monitoring. Project reports, preparing funding proposals, and planning new stewardship activities takes up the remainder of time behind the computer.
Richard became interested in pursuing a career in wildlife shortly after high school in Golden BC, and has lived and worked as a biologist in the Kootenay region ever since. One of Richards’s first wildlife-related jobs was as a student biologist with the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program where he became exposed to a wide variety of ecological-based projects throughout the Columbia Basin. Richard then obtained his B.Sc. in Biology-Wildlife at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George in 2001. He recently completed his M.Sc. in Environmental Science (Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops) on road ecology and highway mitigation design for badgers in south-central British Columbia. Richard has worked as a contract wildlife biologist throughout British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and has extensive experience surveying and handling small and medium-sized wildlife for research and inventory projects, including northern goshawks, fisher, wolverine and badgers. Additionally, he has contributed to habitat and ecosystem restoration projects, wildlife inventory and species-at-risk surveys.
Click here find out more about the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s work in British Columbia.
