The Nature Canada Awards represent our heartfelt tribute to the arduous work and dedication of those wonderful people. All of our winners have confirmed themselves to be forces of nature, for nature!
The 2025 Jodi Pleasure Volunteer for Nature Award
Jodi Pleasure has devoted over twenty years to Nature Canada, main its member growth communications and elevating thousands and thousands of {dollars} to guard wildlife and wilderness whereas partaking Canadians to take motion for nature. This award stands for dedication and tireless dedication to defending nature!
This yr we acknowledge two winners of the Jodi Pleasure Volunteer for Nature Award: Soren Bondrup-Nielsen and Kiyoshi Takahashi.
Kiyoshi Takahashi of Coquitlam, BC, has been a Nature Canada member since 1992. He has been a pacesetter in chook and bat habitat restoration for many years via his work with Burke Mountain Naturalists, Colony Farm Park Affiliation and Minnekhada Park Affiliation. A specialist in bat and purple martin conservation, he has put in a few years of devoted work to guard these species by constructing nest containers and finishing up surveys.
Kiyoshi Takahashi in his ingredient, working with purple martin nesting containers.
Purple martins in BC are a hit story that has impressed conservationists throughout the nation. In the Nineteen Fifties, the inhabitants of purple martins had been decreased to 2 breeding pairs in Victoria. A breeding field program for the birds started within the early Eighties, and Kiyoshi started constructing nesting containers. Now, current estimates put the inhabitants of purple martins within the decrease mainland and japanese Vancouver Island at round 1,200 nesting pairs. Kiyoshi has been known as “instrumental” on this comeback.
Kiyoshi nonetheless works on purple martin conservation by constructing purple martin nest containers, taking care of nest websites and guiding teams across the websites. He studies, although, that at ninety-three years of age, he’s “ dealing with some difficulties in climbing up a few meters excessive.”
He places his hope within the youthful generations and their curiosity and enthusiasm about nature. “Nature conservation teams ought to often present info and data to elementary faculty age kids by offering nature studying programs,” he says. He feels that artwork lessons specifically, which require shut remark and exploration, may also help convey kids nearer to nature.
Soren Bondrup-Nielsen
Soren was Professor of Biology at Acadia College for 27 years, the place he taught ecology and conservation biology. Retiring in 2016, he turned President of the Blomidon Naturalists Society (BNS) in Nova Scotia in 2018. Below Soren’s management, the group has remodeled from a small nature group providing periodic subject journeys and month-to-month talks with about 100 members to a strong naturalist/environmental group with 300-plus member households.
Soren Bondrup-Nielsen (foreground), co-winner of the 2025 Jodi Pleasure Volunteer for Nature Award
With Soren on the helm, the board of Blomidon Naturalists Society (BNS) has gained energy, ardour, and numbers. His tenure has seen the launch of group initiatives resembling native plant training, a multi-year advocacy marketing campaign for a brand new protected space within the area, and a group venture to revive Acadian forest in a neighborhood park in partnership with the City of Wolfville.
“It’s a nice honour to be nominated and be chosen for the Jodi Pleasure Volunteer for Nature Award,” says Soren. “I used to be completely unaware that I had been nominated!”
As a professor of biology, Soren supervised over 70 college students, lots of whom have gone on to develop into skilled biologists. He was a part of three nature organizations in Nova Scotia who introduced a profitable authorized problem towards the provincial authorities concerning its lack of motion on the Endangered Species Laws.
Says Soren: “With organizations like Nature Canada and naturalists societies throughout Canada such because the Blomidon Naturalists Society, I really feel there may be nice hope that we people will work out the way to really dwell sustainably.”