Biographical Notes for CMI Directors
Marc-André Beaucher, Wynndel
Marc-André traveled to the Kootenays in 1995 from Sherbrooke, Quebec, where he grew up. He is the area manager/biologist for the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area. His work in wetland management and involvement with the Northern Leopard Frog Recovery Team has given him good knowledge of freshwater inland wetland functions and characteristics. His work experience includes amphibian and waterfowl surveys, water quality monitoring, fauna and flora identification, management of wetland units through water level manipulations, wetland restoration, and water control infrastructure management.
Marc-André earned a B.Sc. in Applied Zoology from McGill University (1996) and a M.Sc. in Environment and Management from Royal Roads University (2005). His thesis investigated the effects of seasonal water level fluctuation in Duck Lake (Creston, BC) on non-native largemouth bass in relation to dissolved oxygen.
Marc-André Beaucher is currently the Vice-President of the Columbia Mountains Institute.
Kevin Bollefer, Revelstoke
Kevin moved to Revelstoke in 1997, after completing his BSc at the University of Victoria in Biology and Environmental Studies. He became interested in forestry in the area and completed his forestry requirements to become a Registered Professional Forester with the Association of BC Forest Professionals in 2002. Kevin has worked as a forestry engineer, while doing various biology jobs for the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, and Parks Canada. Kevin now works with the Revelstoke Community Forest Corporation, where he is the Operations Forester. Kevin is a member of the " Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild" project.
Kevin Bollefer is currently Secretary/Treasurer for the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology
Sarah Boyle, Revelstoke
Sarah moved to Revelstoke in 2009 from the East Kootenays to work as an ecologist for Parks Canada. She has a Masters of Science in Environmental Management from Royal Roads University, and has been a registered professional biologist in Alberta since 2002. Sarah has worked internationally in both the United States and South America with not-for profit agencies, has worked in the Alberta oil and gas industry as an environmental adviser and environmental compliance auditor. In 2004 she started her career with Parks Canada in the polar bear capital of the world – Churchill, Manitoba – and has since made her way south. Sarah also sits as a board member of the Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild Society.
Patrick Daigle, Victoria
While completing a graduate degree in Missoula, Patrick and his partner Jane had the good fortune of enjoying a waterfront rental on the Clark Fork of the Columbia. While there, Patrick worked as a field silviculturist for the US Forest Service within American portions of the Columbia Basin. During the 1980s, Patrick and his family lived in New Denver. Over several decades, he's traveled, played, and worked in mountain areas of the Columbia watershed in BC, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Wyoming.
Over the past 20 years, Patrick’s work has focused on applied ecology at stand- and landscape-levels, biodiversity, disturbance ecology, and research extension while with the Ministry of Environment and the BC Forest Service. Before working with the BC government, he completed research and field contract assignments for the BC Forest Service and and the US Forest Service. Though Patrick retired from the Ministry of Environment in 2012, he continues to do ecosystem-related volunteer work, for the Ministry of Environment, the CMI, and as other opportunities arise.
Patrick’s academic background includes an M.Sc. (Forestry) from the University of Montana, a Forest Resources Diploma from Selkirk College, and a B.A. in economics from the University of Alberta. Patrick is a Registered Professional Forester (Retired).
Dr. Jenny Feick, Victoria
Dr. Jenny Feick's interest in the CMI stems from her previous work in protected areas management, her academic training, and her experience as a former resident of the Columbia Basin. Jenny has a B.Sc. (Honours) in Environmental Biology and Physical Geography (1977), a Masters of Environmental Design (1995) and a Ph.D. in Geography (2000) all from the University of Calgary.
Jenny runs Nature Wise Environmental Consulting, which offers services in environmental research, communications, and leadership. Jenny has had two careers in public service, one with Parks Canada (1976 to 1998); the other with the BC Ministry of Environment (2000 to 2012). She worked for Parks Canada in a variety of locations in British Columbia, Alberta, and Newfoundland, including Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks. Her work involved communications, research, planning, supervision, and management. While working as a manager for the BC Government in Victoria, she led programs in habitat protection and terrestrial ecosystem science, and led new initiatives in stewardship outreach, wildlife research capability assessment, climate change adaptation for nature, and environmental mitigation.
Jenny believes in integrating natural and social sciences to solve complex natural resource management issues, and in effectively using extension and outreach to foster shared environmental stewardship. In addition to her volunteer work with CMI, she serves as adjunct professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria and on the Board of Directors for the Friends of Ecological Reserves of BC. Jenny loves hiking, cross-country skiing and yoga. As sole proprietor of Nature Wise Yoga, she teaches a variety of yoga classes, as well as offering YEH! (yoga, ecology and hiking) workshops and retreats. She and her husband, Ian Hatter, spend their leisure time connecting with nature, often in the Columbia Mountains.
Dr. Mike Miller, Vernon
Mike Miller is a consulting biologist and photographer based in Vernon. He got his first hit of nature while wandering as a boy through the elephant- and gaur-infested Nilgiri Hills of southwestern India, where he had the good luck to been born and raised. After completing his Ph.D. in population ecology at the University of Victoria, Mike migrated to the Columbia Mountains in search of deeper snow, bigger rivers, and a quieter life. A trained botanist and plant demographer, Mike’s primary focus has been on the conservation and management of plant species at risk. He has authored numerous COSEWIC status reports and SARA-compliant recovery strategies for plants, including the national multi-species recovery strategy for vernal pool plants at risk in Garry oak and associated ecosystems. His other research interests include the control and management of invasive alien species, and the impacts of climate change on alpine communities.
Adrienne Shaw
Adrienne has an M.Sc. in Ecology and has spent 15 years in Natural Resource Management. Adrienne was born in the Columbia Basin and has now settled in Pass Creek in the Selkirk Mountains. She has extensive experience with wildlife and vegetation studies with Masse Environmental Consultants, Parks Canada, University of Victoria, Ministry of Forests, and BC Hydro. She specializes in ecosystem monitoring, ecological restoration and research. She is currently working on numerous projects in the Columbia Basin focusing on wildlife research and management for grizzly bears, ungulates, raptors, song birds, and amphibians. Her M.Sc. thesis also addressed conservation and ecological restoration of subalpine meadows in the Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains.
Dr. Kari Stuart-Smith
Kari Stuart-Smith has loved the East Kootenay ever since coming to do her PhD field work on songbirds, wildfire, and variable retention in the White River watershed east of Canal Flats in 1997. She was the Forest Scientist for Tembec from 1999 through March 2012, and is now the Forest Scientist for Canfor, based out of Cranbrook. Her work focuses on forestry-wildlife interactions, and she works closely with forest planners to develop and apply innovative forestry practices to conserve wildlife habitat and mitigate the impacts of forestry on wildlife. In addition to songbirds, she has studied goshawks, moose, mountain goats, badgers, and boreal caribou. Kari has extensive experience with Forest Stewardship Council certification, and is a certified lead auditor for ISO 14001. Prior to coming to the East Kootenay she worked as a wildlife biologist with Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries in north-eastern Alberta, studied predation on red squirrels in the Yukon for her MSc at the University of Alberta, and spent a year in Africa travelling and volunteering on numerous wildlife projects. She and her husband Ian Adams (a Past President of CMI) have two children and love to spend time outdoors birdwatching, hiking, and canoeing.
Tara Szkorupa, Cranbrook
Tara has worked as a wildlife biologist in Jasper National Park (her hometown), west central Alberta and now the Kootenay Region on a range of critters including butterflies, harlequin ducks, caribou, elk, deer and moose. She is currently a wildlife biologist with the Ministry of Environment, focused primarily on cervid population management.
Tara has been enamoured with the Kootenays since arriving and setting down roots in Cranbrook in 2002. Through her roles as a CMI director, she looks forward to connecting with other CMI members, and expanding her knowledge of the unique ecology in the region.
Harry van Oort, Revelstoke
Harry lives in Revelstoke and works as a wildlife biologist throughout the Columbia Mountains. Prior to 2009, Harry became intimately familiar with the "Big Bend" country north of Revelstoke, while working on the caribou project initiated by Dr. Bruce McLellan, one of the early founding members of CMI. To the south one of his favourite projects has been attempting to mitigate reservoir impacts on loons at the Whatshan Reservoir. Currently Harry is employed by Cooper Beauchesne and Associates Ltd. and is immersed in other reservoir related research regarding the productivity of the avian community and habitat utilization of migratory waterfowl and shorebirds in the Kinbasket and Arrow Lakes Reservoirs. When not working, Harry likes to spend time with his family and friends in the mountains.
Mary von der Porten
Mary’s motivation for joining the CMI Board is rooted in a passion for ecological research and its applications in management. Mary was trained as an ecologist at the University of Victoria and Uppsala University (Sweden) and recently obtained a Masters in Resource Management from Simon Fraser University where she specialized in spatial modeling of bear ecology. Her career began with work in human-bear conflict in Whistler, BC and her expertise in applied ecology has since expanded from wildlife to other areas in resource management. This included teaching and coordinating the Haida Gwaii Semester program – where university education in natural resources is integrated within a resource dependent community, fostering resilience. Mary recently moved from BC’s coast to Nelson where she works with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations. Although she still dreams of orcas and other coastal creatures, she has now immersed herself in the diverse ecology of the Kootenay area. Through CMI she hopes to keep abreast with current ecological research in the area and to help merge science, resource management, and community sustainability.
Dr. Brendan Wilson, Winlaw
Originally from the Bow Valley in Alberta, Brendan continues to explore a life-long interest in subalpine and timberline forest communities in the Columbia Basin. He completed a B.Sc. in applied environmental biology at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. His Honours thesis investigated the effect of selective harvesting on understory plant communities in an Australian subalpine forest. Back in the Alberta Rockies, Brendan examined the regeneration dynamics of alpine larch for his doctoral work at the University of Alberta. Brendan is the Chair of the School of Environment and Geomatics at Selkirk College, in Castlegar.
Brendan Wilson is currently President of the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology.