Hello, hi, I’m Tobi Nussbaum, the CEO of the National Capital Commission, and
in today’s episode of Capital Stories, we’re going to talk about all things
conservation and conservation officers.
You may know, or you may not know, that the NCC is responsible for planning and
stewarding over a thousand square kilometres of land in the National Capital
Region.
What you also may know, or may not know, is that we have a whole team of
conservation officers who are out there every day making sure everything’s okay
on the land, checking in with people, looking after health and safety issues,
and generally, our eyes and ears, every day, throughout all four seasons, hot and
cold, to make sure that the NCC lands are properly managed.
In this episode, we’re going to explore the multifaceted roles of these
conservation officers, highlighting their contribution to protect biodiversity,
while, as I said, contributing to just understanding what’s happening in our
lands, dealing with issues and problems as they arise, and also being a helpful
resource for people who have questions or concerns about anything that’s
happening out there.
So, I’m very pleased today to be joined by Diane Barbarie.
Bonjour, hello—and Christopher Myles.
Thanks to both of you for joining me today.
So, I’m just going to start things off by asking you… tell me about a day in
the life of an NCC conservation officer, from start to finish.
What’s a typical day?
Diane, do you want to go first?
Yes.
So, when we start our shift, we’ll either start with having a look at all the
reports that came in, the concerns, you know, from the public, and then we go
from there.
So, if there’s a call, that’s our priority, and if not, then we follow up on
reports that we’ve had, and the day goes on.
So, whatever happens during the day, we go with the priorities first.
And so, in terms of the role between the office and being out there,
Christopher, tell me a bit about that balance.
I presume you start your day here at Bayview Yards, just west of downtown, to
check in, and then what does it look like in terms of going from the office out
into the field?
Typically, it follows a lot of what Diane just mentioned.
We’ll kind of just get our bearings as far as what priorities are of the day,
but in general, we try to get out into the field as speedily as possible, and
start approaching all the new problems and the fresh issues of the day, and
make sure we respond to calls.
And like Diane just said, it’s a priority base to the calls themselves, but
then again, we can get multiple calls sometimes, and it’s up to us to triage
those calls based on importance or level of hazard or risk to the public or
whatnot, right?
So it’s up to us to kind of really manage our own priorities with the guidance
from what’s coming down from our supervisors, managers, NCC priorities,
etcetera, right?
And as part of the tactic, Diane, to kind of cover our different conservation
officers, covering different areas every day. Is it as much surveillance as it
is responsive, or how do you figure out who’s going where?
Let’s say you don’t have any calls, but you’re just doing your general
surveillance, in general, checking out the lands. Do different teams go to
different places every day?
Is that how it works?
We do.
We make sure that we have, we actually have, like different zones.
So on… you know, two different provinces, Ontario and Quebec, we have different
zones.
So we make sure that we have an officer, you know, in every zone, so that the
response is quicker.
And if there’s something to check, at least the timeline is faster.
Great.
Now, I suspect that to do this job, you need a little bit of training.
So, Christopher, do you want to talk a little bit about the different kinds of
trainings one has to have to be a full-time conservation officer?
Yeah, absolutely.
We do go through a number of trainings.
All… I would say yearly, for most things.
A good example would be forest firefighting training, where we’re trained forest
firefighters through the SOPFEU agency of Quebec, the provincial firefighting
agency.
We do that once a year.
We do our use of force on a regular basis, depending on how… when that needs to
be renewed.
That’s just more for our personal safety out there, so that we know how to
respond given the worst-case scenario or everything in between.
Our chemical mobilization training is a pretty… pretty big one for us.
We go through that once every few years in a comprehensive sense, but we do it
in-house at least once a year, sometimes more, just so that we’re on top of
everything we need to do to make sure that those calls go well, because there’s
a lot of technical stuff involved with those operations.
So, we like to make sure that within the team, we’re up to speed, we’re ready to
go at any given moment, and we also do it with trained veterinarians, wildlife
veterinarians from across Canada to get into the more comprehensive aspects of
those operations.
But those are some examples.
We do our first aids very regularly.
We do our boat safety training regularly, and a lot of legislative stuff, just
to make sure we’re covered on what’s current, what’s up to date, any changes to
anything that’s going on in our world, essentially.
Fantastic, thanks.
And Diane, what would be something that you think would surprise people about
the work you do, the training you do, the experiences you have?
I would have to say the diversity in our job.
So, a day can start with reading the occurrence report, and then it goes to a
search and rescue for a missing person.
It can go from an injury, someone on a trail gets injured.
It can be an offence being… happening right now, or it did happen in the past and then
we have to investigate on.
So yeah, the diversity can go from animal regulations, also, that we do enforce.
So, when we have reports of an issue or ongoing issue for that, we do enforce
those regulations.
And sometimes our partners within the city will call us and work with our
partners within the city.
So it could be Ottawa Police, it could be the RCMP, it could be the MRC des
Collines.
So we do work… Gatineau police.
We do work with a lot of either their requests, or then we request them to
assist us in certain situations.
Fantastic.
Now speaking of diversity of roles, behind me is a boat, behind you is a bear
cage.
Christopher, let’s talk about the bear cage first because I think people will
be interested.
Tell me a time that you have used the bear cage and how it works.
The bear cages are intended to essentially live-trap an animal, a bear.
We use them as a means of, if we have a nuisance bear in the area or reports of,
or sightings, it’s a way to capture that animal with the least amount of
complications.
So essentially, we bait the cages to attract the bear, allow it to enter, trap
it live—no harm done to the bear, no harm done to us.
Then we can simply go through our partner agencies, like Diane was explaining,
and relocate it to a more suitable habitat.
We use those in cases of, we have several farms in the Greenbelt and Quebec
side.
Let’s say a bear has come in from the forest and is now eating your beehives or
eating your apple trees.
Once a bear finds a location that there’s a really abundant source of food
without any issues, no other people, bears, bothering them, they won’t really
tend to leave.
And in order to mitigate that or get ahead of anything that could transpire
with somebody who wants to pick apples running into a bear, we try to get them
into the cage and then get them back to where they should be without any
[im]mobilization required.
I’m sure our audience would be interested to know, when bears are in the cage,
do they tend to be docile or angry or resign to being in a cage?
What does their behaviour look like when they’re in that cage?
It’s a great question.
I liken animals often to humans.
There are very predictable behaviours and there are very unpredictable behaviours
attributed to individuals.
Generally speaking, though, in my experience anyway, and Diane might have more
to add, she’s been here longer than I have,
they’re fairly docile most of the time.
They may not be too happy about it, but I think they have enough cognitive
awareness that they’re stuck in there.
And generally, after a few moments that the bear, in my sense and perception
anyway, that we’re not a threat, they don’t really react.
They get calmer as well.
So, most in my experience, it’s been a fairly calm situation.
Interesting.
So, behind me, Diane, is a boat.
The NCC has a lot of lakes in its domain, a lot of rivers.
In what cases would you take the boat out and what does that look like?
Well, we have different...
the boat is only one of the different kind of patrols that we do.
But the boat, we would take it on the Ottawa River—especially that one.
We have smaller boats for the other lakes, like Meech Lake, Philippe, and La
Pêche.
So, it would be either somebody that’s stuck on a lake, that’s missing
equipment, and they can’t go back to shore… to enforce our regulations, but from
the shoreline, because the NCC owns a lot of shoreline.
And we have Leamy Lake, also, that we can go.
So, that’s only one of the ways that we patrol.
There’s also ATVs.
There’s also our vehicles, our trucks.
There’s our bikes.
And so, yeah, there’s different...
There’s always a foot patrol, which is a good exercise to do.
And so, yeah, so that’s just one of them.
But lots of toys.
Lots of toys.
Yes.
Summer and winter, I imagine.
Yes.
We have snowmobiles too for the winter.
Right.
Great.
I want to ask you each a question, which is: in your job,
what is one unforgettable moment or one interesting experience you’ve had that
you think the audience would like to hear?
Maybe it’s odd or funny or strange, whatever it is.
Christopher, why don’t you go first?
There’s several to choose from.
It’s actually a bit...
there’s so many, it’s hard to come up with one right off the bat.
But one I’ll just throw out that comes to mind immediately:
I had a family at Lac Philippe many years ago who encountered a bear, innocuous
encounter.
There was no, you know, just a bear in the woods, but a lot of people aren’t
used to seeing bears, especially in close proximity.
So they opted to climb a rather large white pine on the beach.
And this included, I think, a 75-year-old grandmother and it was a family of
five.
They’d all managed to ascend the tree quite high.
And I guess the teaching point in all this is that climbing a tree is actually
one of the things you shouldn’t do when you encounter a bear because they’re
fantastic climbers and it’s kind of the opposite of what we would recommend you
do.
But this was their reaction when we found them.
And it actually took us quite some time to locate them because even though we
were standing right below them, they were so [afraid] in the moment that they
didn’t say anything even when they saw us.
So, you know, it took...
I think the young kid said something and we’re like, whoa.
So we actually had to climb the trees ourselves and—help them down—kind of carry them down, and
lower them into the bed of the truck and just kind of quick thinking in the
moment, use what we had at our disposal to rectify the situation, and just do a
little public relations and, you know, explain like, next time, you know, don’t
do this, do that, do this.
So maybe not the right course of action, but impressive that a whole family
managed to climb a tree, and a 75-year-old at that.
So, some positives in there too.
A bit of a surprise.
Innovation.
That’s a great story.
Diane, what’s a story that stands out for you in terms of your experience as a
conservation officer?
For me, it’s a little bit different.
So, it’s mainly on a search and rescue for an injured person.
And we had to...
She was quite far into Richard Lake and Gatineau Park.
And we had to use the spinal board and we had to put the individual on the
spinal board and then do a little bit of distance in the woods.
And then we had to put that person into a...
it’s like a basket on wheels, to go in between like the trees.
Oh, wow.
And then we had to switch that person into the rescue slate, which was behind
the ATV.
And then we had to transport that person to her vehicle because she had a ride
to go to the hospital.
But it was just to show how many ways that we can rescue somebody.
And it doesn’t take only one piece of equipment.
Sometimes it takes a multiple, you know, pieces of equipment to get them out of the woods
because sometimes they’re way in.
So for me, that’s one that I can remember.
And just a side note, for me, the thank you cards… goes a long way.
And they’re really happy that, you know, we’ve, you know, helped them, assist them, and just reminds
us of why we do that job.
Wow.
Isn’t that nice?
Yeah.
It’s nice to get recognition from the public about the work you guys do.
And anything else that you guys would want to share?
Anything I’ve missed in terms of things that you would want the public to know
about the work you guys do?
One thing that I could suggest or to help people, when they go on a trail, is to
stay on the official trails, to choose the right app, so that they don’t get
lost.
And maybe, as I do, take a picture of the map that’s at the trailhead.
Take a picture.
And at least if you’re lost, you still have it with you.
And make sure that cell phone is charged, fully charged.
Excellent tips.
Christopher, anything else that you would want to add before we finish?
No.
I mean, we’re, as you said in your introduction, we’re here to maintain the
ecological integrity and also the integrity of the NCC’s assets.
So just to be respectful when using all of the lands, all of the facilities.
It just makes everybody’s experience that much more pleasant and means you
probably won’t have to talk to us anytime soon.
So yeah, we can go about doing things like saving people and other things.
Great.
No, it’s a fantastic place to work.
And honestly, we feel privileged to be here.
Excellent.
And for my part, thank you very much for the work you guys do.
You and all of your colleagues who work here in the conservation team at
Bayview Yards, where we are today.
And thanks to both of you for joining me on this episode of Capital Stories and
telling us a little bit about the behind-the-scenes look at the work you do.
And thanks to our listeners, too, for joining us for this episode of Capital
Stories.
And we’ll see you the next time.