My name is Trinity, I am a recent graduate of UPEI’s bachelor of arts program and the Belfast Area Watershed Group’s newest employee! I started my journey with the BAWG team last summer, as one of their Water Rangers club members and a volunteer. Animal and plant life has always been one of my biggest passions, but for a long time, I didn’t really know how to get involved in protecting them. Volunteering with BAWG taught me that there are so many ways locals can contribute to conservation work beyond simply caring for the creatures around my own home. Their eagerness to share their work and knowledge with others inspired me to finally pursue the work I always imagined I’d be doing when I was younger.
I’ve only been working with BAWG for a few weeks and could not be having more fun. When I started, I was worried that I might struggle to keep up, having little experience working in the field. But the others are always happy to answer my never-ending questions and teach me how things are done. I couldn’t have imagined how much I would learn in just a few weeks. Identifying birds by their calls, watershed health, function and preservation techniques, plant identification, how to conduct wildlife surveys, and water quality and flow testing are just a few of so many things I am learning during my time here.
We have many projects on the go right now, each of them as fascinating as the next. So far, my favorite project we are working on is our pollinator survey! As of today, pollinators are fairly under-studied on PEI, and the goal of this project is to help gain a better idea of what kinds of bees, butterflies and wasps frequent our island flora. Insects are one of my favorite kinds of critters so getting to work with and learn about them up close is amazing.
While I’ve only been working with BAWG a short while, the experiences we’ve had and the things I’ve learned have gone far beyond my expectations coming into the field. Even in my free time, I find myself trying to identify birds when I hear them singing or sharing interesting facts I’ve learned with my friends and family. The season is just getting started, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store for us!
