Meet Bethany Parsons

 

What is your position title?

Monitoring Biologist

When did you first come to Jasper?

I moved to Jasper in September 2021 for my current job, but I was initially brought to the area doing grizzly bear research in the foothills for my Master of Science (MSc).

What was your education/career path?

Both of my parents are biologists, which gave me lots of exposure to the lifestyle! I spent my teen years getting up before classes to do bird surveys with my mom. I attended the University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus (UBC Okanagan) for my undergraduate degree in biology and returned to my hometown each summer for a field job. At first I was an invasive species technician and then I spent two summers working for a small environmental consulting company.

I knew I wouldn’t want to go back to school if I took a break, so after undergrad I jumped straight into an MSc degree at UBC Vancouver studying grizzly bear movement as related to remote sensing data. I chose to do an office-based research project, although less glamorous than some field research, to hone my skills in statistics and geomatic information systems. There weren’t too many people hiring when I graduated in spring of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, but my research partners from my MSc took pity on me. They hired me for a short contract at fRI Research in Hinton, where I continued to work on grizzly bears. From there, I was fortunate that the Jasper National Park (JNP) Monitoring team was looking for someone with some remote sensing skills and I was hired into my current position in the spring of 2021.

What do you do for Parks Canada?

Working on the JNP Monitoring team provides many different opportunities! Our job is to keep tabs on the health of the various ecosystems of the park, from glaciers to plants to mammals. Over the summer, I hike around our huge park and collect data from our biggest project, which uses wildlife cameras to monitor mammals. I also maintain an alpine plant project which uses time-lapse photography to measure the effects of climate change on alpine vegetation, and I help out on a number of other projects. My favourite days (other than the ones when I’m on top of a mountain) are spent working at our bird-banding station, where we catch and release songbirds to understand their health, reproductive success and long-term population dynamics. Over the winter I sit down at my desk to analyze all the data we’ve collected, make maps, write up reports and make plans for my next field season!

What would you tell a 10-year-old girl about science?

There are so many different avenues to explore when it comes to science. You can make discoveries in a lab, at a computer or on a mountaintop. Stop to notice and learn about how amazing the living world around you is, and your scientific career will be off to a great start.