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Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet: Inspiring Goals for Growth and Sustainability

As we step into 2025, it’s natural to reflect on the successes and lessons of the past year. For many, 2024 was a year of growth, achievement, and progress. But now, it’s time to think even bigger. What goals can you set to make 2025 an even greater success? At NRTG, we’re passionate about helping individuals and communities thrive while building a sustainable future. We believe that with the right focus and support, you can achieve meaningful milestones both personally and professionally. 

Read More… Make 2025 Your Best Year Yet: Inspiring Goals for Growth and Sustainability

NRTG’s Educational Partner Program: Empowering Natural Resource and Environmental Educators

Discover how to turn your passion for the environment into a successful career as an environmental consultant. Explore the essential career path, the importance of sustainability, and specialized training opportunities that equip you for real-world challenges. Start your journey toward making a positive impact today!

Read More… NRTG’s Educational Partner Program: Empowering Natural Resource and Environmental Educators

From Passion to Profession: How to Become a Successful Environmental Consultant

Discover how to turn your passion for the environment into a successful career as an environmental consultant. Explore the essential career path, the importance of sustainability, and specialized training opportunities that equip you for real-world challenges. Start your journey toward making a positive impact today!

Read More… From Passion to Profession: How to Become a Successful Environmental Consultant

Discovering the Beauty of Canada’s Diverse Landscapes: A Journey Through Ecological Regions and Watersheds

As I embark on my eight-day journey through Alberta and Saskatchewan, I am reminded of the incredible diversity of Canada’s natural landscapes and the importance of ecological regions and watershed management. From the Fraser River Canyon to the boreal forest, each day brings new wonders and opportunities to connect with the natural world, practicing sustainable travel and environmental appreciation. 

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Creating Presentations to Draw Focus and Maximize Learning

I am hearing but not listening, I am struggling to keep my focus…my mind doesn’t hesitate to wonder what’s for lunch. I steal a quick glance at my phone…only 15 minutes have passed!

The experience of sitting through an arduous presentation, perhaps feeling disengaged and impatient, is not one that is foreign to me. Growing up, I was the student who couldn’t sit still. I was easily distracted. I was bored. I was eager for the next thing. I was always on the move from one activity to the next. It took me many years to realize that there was nothing inherently wrong with me, that I was simply an unconventional learner; the traditional methods of learning did not suit me well (or in the language of today, it was not vibing).

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Thirty years of chasing fishes: Some considerations on designing a fish sampling program

Much of the work we do as environmental professionals, and efforts in the conservation and protection diciplines, revolve around fish. And as part of that the two most fundamental questions are: (i) what species are present in a waterbody and (ii) how abundant are they? Sounds like it should be straightforward to answer these, right? It is only two questions. To address these, however, requires robust and effective fish sampling programs. Over three decades I have seen a great variety of fish sampling programs, some achieving those metrics of robust and effective; others not meeting that bar. So how do we build a solid fish sampling program? Some suggestions are provided here. These propositions are not derived from academic or theoretical constructs of required sample numbers or optimal sampling theory – these are based on lessons learned participating in both very well-designed programs and others that appeared to have no coherent design to the process.

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Describing that landscape that surrounds you

As environmental practitioners one of our common tasks is to communicate to an audience a description of the area – the environment – in which we are working. Whether we call it Project Area in an environmental assessment document, Environmental Setting in an engineering report, or Study Area in a scientific paper, this characterization of the land is a fundamental part of communicating to our audience.

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Do we stay or do we go? – Making decisions in the field

In the biological and environmental field we often stress the need for observation, to be aware of what is occurring around you and for noticing the relevant while ignoring the irrelevant. But we do not teach skills to build this faculty – we tell people what they should do but are absent in providing guidance on the how of doing it. So how does one become more observant and take greater notice of the environment they are within? Two tools already within your reach to develop or sharpen observation skills are drawing and writing.

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Drawing and writing – training tools for observation

In the biological and environmental field we often stress the need for observation, to be aware of what is occurring around you and for noticing the relevant while ignoring the irrelevant. But we do not teach skills to build this faculty – we tell people what they should do but are absent in providing guidance on the how of doing it. So how does one become more observant and take greater notice of the environment they are within? Two tools already within your reach to develop or sharpen observation skills are drawing and writing.

Read More… Drawing and writing – training tools for observation

NRTG at Williams Lake First Nation Career Fair

I recently flew up to Williams Lake to represent NRTG at the Williams Lake First Nation Career Fair.

Sean Mitchell, NRTG’s Program Manager, supplied pelts for me from a red fox, rabbit, and a mink to display. Angie Bristol, NRTG’s Communications Manager, supplied all the swag and pamphlets. Both pelts and swag were a big hit with the crowd! The booth looked great, other booths there represented Ambulance and RCMP agencies, mining companies, health and wellness organizations, and universities.

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NRTG at the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists

We recently had the pleasure of attending the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists conference in Red Deer, from November 22 to 24. NRTG staff that attended had an opportunity to chat with many of the attendees and, importantly, reconnect with previous students we have not seen in several years. It is with great pride of our students that we could see so many of them doing so well professionally and know that we contributed, in some small way, to their success and their work in professional environmental biology. The reward for instructors and for NRTG is watching former students grow and master the skills we introduce them to.

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Good Luck or Good Planning?

“Wow! You guys have been really lucky collecting broodstock this year!”

That’s what a former supervisor said to me after I told him that we had just collected our target number of Atlantic salmon from one of the rivers we were enhancing. I agreed, though I must confess I was a little disappointed in his remark about “luck”.

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NAFF IV Conference 2023

A couple weeks ago, between October 16th and 19th, Nanaimo BC hosted the Fourth National Indigenous Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum, an event to which NRTG staff attended. Over three days, there were presentations regarding various aspects of fisheries and aquaculture and opportunities for Indigenous nations.

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Can parks tell us as much about human behaviour as that of wildlife?

We heard the eerie bugle of the elk before we saw him. The sound seized the attention of the five point bull we were watching; he was nervous and eyeing the building while also trying to sidle up to the cows. Then the huge dominant bull walked around from behind the hotel and, glaring at the younger animal, began to pace toward it.

Read More… Can parks tell us as much about human behaviour as that of wildlife?

Successful Resumes: Ten Recommendations To Demonstrate To The Employer You Can Solve Their Problem

The resume is one of the most important documents you will write in your life: it is your passport to new opportunities. Unfortunately, I find that most people are not served well by their own resume. Someone that I talk to for fifteen minutes on zoom and shows passion, intelligence, and experience sends me their resume and in it they are flat, lifeless, and without colour. This is what I mean by not being served well; it does not reflect who they truly are.

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Personalized flowcharts: A technique for learning identification in a very effective manner

Happy Spring 2023 all readers of these blogs. Field season now really kicks off for another year and in the spring a young biologist’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of… species identification (with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson). Accurate and confident identification to species can be very challenging. I personally greatly struggle with tree identification…

Read More… Personalized flowcharts: A technique for learning identification in a very effective manner

Habitat, timing, and stealth: Hunting skills applied to electrofishing

The technique of electrofishing is ubiquitous and universal for fish assessment work. When we teach the electrofishing course we focus, most appropriately, a great deal on the safety of passing electricity through water (pop quiz: those of you that electrofish what are the three mandatory safety features on an electrofishing unit?1). However, in priorizing safety…

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Biology is not a degree

Gentle reader, I beg your indulgence to begin this blog with a long passage. There is a point to it, I assure you. I have heard honest men swear that they have killed and cut open tiburons [sharks] and found so many things in their bellies that they would have considered it impossible if they had not…

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The ties that bind: Knots

Several years ago, working in the lowland streams of Nova Scotia, I set a series of minnow traps into the brook and left them for the overnight set. It rained that night. Heavily. Returning to the stream next day I found it overflowing, brown, muddy, and roaring through the channel. Pulling in the lines of…

Read More… The ties that bind: Knots

Looking for the invisible

Preamble: Gentle reader, it has been four months since I have appeared before you. Obligations and opportunities required my absence for a third of the year but now I am back. I am very pleased to be able to appear once again on the page in front of you. Reflecting upon my absence, I thought…

Read More… Looking for the invisible

Tips for better proposals

Mid-winter. A time of thinking about summer work, planning, designing, scoping… And also writing those pesky proposals that drive the work we do. Having written a few proposals in my time as well as sitting on the other side of the desk and receiving proposals for work, I would like to distill a few, to…

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Return of the Generalist

By Sean Mitchell Today’s working biologist or environmental technician sits at a nexus of many industries, disciplines, and requirements (Figure 1). Not only must we be knowledgeable and competent in our training (typically biology of some form) but also need to be familiar and conversant with a myriad of other tasks; activities such as reading…

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