Eastern Foxsnake – The Massy Mimic
The summer months are just around the corner and our intense spring surveys are winding down. As the mark-recapture portion of our study comes to a bittersweet end, we can now expand our field surveys to new study sites in order to better understand Eastern Massasauga...
read moreGrowing Season: The Trials and Tribulations of Being a Loggerhead Shrike Parent
Greetings from Carden, Ontario The eastern loggerhead shrike breeding season is now well underway with some females in their final days of incubating eggs, and other pairs already busy with nestlings. Loggerhead shrikes generally lay 4-7 eggs, with one egg laid per...
read moreThe Ultimate Game of I Spy: Finding Loggerhead Shrikes
One of the main activities of spring is finding this year’s loggerhead shrikes. Shrikes are philopatric; they return to the same habitat patches year after year, so the easiest way to find a shrike is to go where they have been before. To establish our breeding pairs...
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Painted Rattles and Dorsal Saddles
Hello, from the Georgian Bay massasauga team! We have had a very interesting and productive month with the advance of summer weather, and are pleased to announce that the project has been going wonderfully. The purpose of this study is to determine specific site...
read moreThe Most Seen Massasauga of 2018
May 31, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o893S0mjPG0 Meet Jennifer Barden, a field technician working with the Wildlife Preservation Canada Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery (OPRREC) program focused on the Massasauga rattlesnake and Chunks the Massy! This video is...
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Scope of view: The return of the eastern loggerhead shrike to Carden
As the Eastern Loggerhead Shrike Carden Biologist, my work in mid-April was off to a chilly start with the fields still covered with snow and surrounding lakes perpetually frozen. The ice storm didn’t help much either. It took an extra couple of weeks but spring has...
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Jonathan Choquette
Lead Biologist – Ojibway Prairie Reptile Recovery Program
Jonathan manages the recovery program for the Ojibway population of the massasauga rattlesnake in Southern Ontario. Jonathan is a habitat expert, studying both biology and landscape architecture at the University of Guelph. As an academic for many years, Jonathan has published numerous articles about the importance of habitat for reptiles and amphibians.
Andrea Gielens
Lead Biologist – Fraser Valley Wetland Recovery Program
Andrea manages our captive breeding and release programs for the Oregon spotted frog and the coastal western painted turtle. Andrea has studied at-risk reptiles and amphibians in Canada and abroad, including a term at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey. Andrea also manages the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly recovery program on Denman Island in BC.
Sarah Johnson
Lead Biologist – Native Pollinator Initiative
Based out of Calgary, Sarah manages the native pollinator recovery programs across Canada. Sarah has experience from both the pollinator and the plant perspective – her undergraduate research studied bumble bee wing wear, and her master’s thesis examined wildflower reproduction in the Rocky Mountains.
Hazel Wheeler
Lead Biologist – Eastern Loggerhead Shrike Recovery Program
Hazel manages all aspects of our shrike recovery program, from captive breeding and release, field surveys, and landowner relationships in Ontario, to building partnerships with shrike researchers in the US to work towards species recovery throughout North America. Hazel has been working with at-risk birds for over a decade, including a Master’s degree studying the habitat of the chimney swift.
Grace Pitman
Carden Shrike Biologist – Eastern Loggerhead Shrike Recovery Program
Grace monitors the wild shrike population in Carden, and cares for the captive-hatched juveniles before their release. Grace has always been passionate about the environment and recently completed a MSc in Ecology from the University of Guelph, investigating egg-laying patterns of monarch butterflies on milkweed.
Jennifer Barden
Lead Reptile Recovery Technician – OPRREC
After living in Southern Ontario for most of her life, Jennifer moved to British Columbia and had the opportunity to work with the northern pacific rattlesnake in the South Okanagan, BC. This year she is back in Ontario working with the eastern massasauga rattlesnake as part of the OPRREC field team.
Kaitlyn Hall
Reptile Recovery Technician – OPRREC
Kaitlyn previously worked for the reptile education center Scales Nature Park and their START freshwater turtle projects in Muskoka and Simcoe County. In 2017 she worked as a reptile recovery field intern for the OPRREC program and is returning this season as a field technician.