Meet Madeline (Maddie) Trottier

 

What is your position title?

Resource Management Officer with the Caribou Recovery Team

When did you first come to Jasper?

I’ve been a frequent visitor since first coming out west in 2019 and moved here in September 2022.

What was your education/career path?

I grew up with a strong affinity for science and ecology, and right out of high school started working for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry as a summer student in resource management. I started off undergrad in an archaeology program at Trent University, but after one year of that I went back to my roots and switched to a biology program. Throughout undergrad, I worked for the OMNRF in various summer technician positions, including some land use permitting work and a stint carrying out bat surveys across Ontario. I picked up quite a few volunteer positions throughout undergrad as well, ranging from survey work for all sorts of species (elk, moose, peregrine falcon, breeding birds, herptiles) to collections management for the Natural Heritage Information Centre. I volunteered on a number of graduate student projects as well, which led to working as a technician for a lab at Trent studying herptiles. I completed a fourth-year thesis project with the same lab studying the functional response of spotted salamanders and graduated with a BSc Hons. in 2018.

From here, I worked for the OMNRF as a wildlife technician on a multi-species monitoring project before moving to Edmonton to begin a Masters project at the University of Alberta. I studied the behavioural ecology of the Ya Ha Tinda elk herd for three years while also working as a technician on the long-term YHT elk monitoring project run jointly by the Universities of Alberta and Montana. Following this, I worked as a biologist for a consulting company for a few months before starting with Parks Canada on the Caribou Team.

What do you do for Parks Canada?

I work as a field technician for the caribou program, which means that I spent a good part of the winter organizing and carrying out fieldwork to support the science component of the caribou monitoring program, and spend the summer planning and analyzing data collected during fieldwork. A big part of fieldwork for caribou monitoring consists of scat sampling, which means I also spend a lot of time in the lab swabbing samples. We use a number of different tools to collect data, including GPS collars, remote cameras, and aerial surveys, which all contribute to inform us about the state of caribou in Jasper and the ecological conditions they’re facing.

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

Be curious and stay curious about everything happening around you! There is so much richness added to the world when you spend a bit of time learning about the ecosystems we live in. Staying open to chance opportunities can also lead you to find passions you didn’t even know you had, and end up in a career you’re truly happy to be in. It can be a tough path at times to pursue a path in science, but infinitely rewarding to fulfill that curiosity and contribute to our understanding of the natural world. There’s also in incredible community of women in science as a support. I’m grateful and honoured to have worked with and continue to work with so many amazing female scientists throughout my whole life. They’ve taught me to be tough, to be interested, to be passionate, to love what I’m doing, and to have fun doing it!