Nature has always been my favorite place to be. When I was a kid growing up in Northern Ontario, I spent many happy days outside in the small woods near my parents’ house, building forts, digging up bugs and listening to the birds. In the summer when school was out, my parents used to take my siblings and me to Algonquin Park, sometimes for weeks at a time, and we would constantly be hiking, biking, canoeing and exploring the beautiful park. Being immersed in the outdoors gave me a huge love and appreciation for the animals and plants that lived there, and started me on the path to becoming a conservation biologist! You can visit my website to learn more about my exploration and research.
I’ve loved exploring nature and the outdoors since I was a little kid, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that because of the color of my skin, this was really surprising for some people. Apparently, Black naturalists and outdoors-people are a rare species. There is a reason for this: historically, Black people (and other minorities) have been deliberately excluded from nature and the outdoors. The effects of this exclusion are still visible today. If you look at any ad for an outdoor store, promotional images from a park or nature documentary, you will struggle to find any Black faces.
