Finding the balance
Scholarship winner melds academic excellence with passion for the land
By Beth Frank
Isabelle Laporte grew up seeing conflict between wildlife and humans. Raised on a small sheep farm in rural Quebec, she experienced her father’s frustration when coyotes would threaten the herd.
“I find it so interesting that farmers, who rely on animals for their living, reject wildlife so much and have an instinct to kill them,” says the soft-spoken 28-year-old.
Fascination with this paradox—and a desire to find solutions—has brought Laporte to the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design to work on a master’s of environmental science. Her dream is to help humans co-exist more peacefully and productively with wildlife and the environment.
Laporte is the winner of the new Golder Associates Ltd. Entrance Scholarship in Environmental Science, a $10,000 award funded by Golder Associates Ltd., an international leader in ground engineering and environmental sciences.
“Several Golder staff are EVDS alumni, and this scholarship will establish a direct and potentially long-term relationship with graduate students coming out of the program,” says Ron Morrison, the company’s environmental assessment division manager in Calgary.
Laporte’s journey to this point has been somewhat circuitous.
Raised near the small village of Chesterville, Quebec, she first graduated with a diploma in theatre management. For three years, she worked as the technical director for a dance company, traveling across Europe. After one tour, she decided to stay on for a vacation—participating in an archeological dig in Tunisia.
That holiday changed her life.
As she worked alongside master’s candidates at the dig, she felt a strong connection with the university students who were so immersed in ideas and intellectual pursuits.
“I realized that I wanted to go back to school, to do something for me, to grow,” she says.
In choosing what to study, she found her interests kept straying back to her childhood and her love for nature, animals and the land. “It was like returning to my first love.”
Laporte enrolled at the University of Montreal and completed an honours bachelor of science in physical geography, a degree that allowed her to combine her two passions of biology and geology.
During one of her summers, she did field work in Canmore using GPS technology to track bears and wolves. “I really liked it here, and I hoped I would have a chance to return,” she says.
Laporte won two NSERC undergraduate student research awards while completing her BSc—a remarkable and rare accomplishment for an undergraduate—and spent summers working on a bio-acoustic project.
By analyzing the sounds of humans, birds, insects, frogs and toads—recorded in selected habitats—Laporte was able to paint a picture of wildlife activity. Computer models were then used to compare these sounds over time, and provide insight into how humans were affecting a particular ecosystem.
After graduating with top marks, she looked west for her next challenge.
“The program here [at U of C] just fits what I want to do,” she says.
Laporte plans to study how wildlife in the foothills are reacting—and adapting—to the growing presence of humans that has resulted from increased oil and gas development and recreation.
As part of her research, she will compare levels of human activity with the behaviour of wildlife
tracked through GPS monitoring. Her findings will provide fodder to public policy makers who are looking to balance the needs of humans and animals.
Laporte was a natural choice for the Golder award, says EVDS’s Dr. Mary-Ellen Tyler, who was acting program co-ordinator when the award was established. “Her undergraduate research history was very impressive and unique. Given that the spirit of the award is researched-based, that played a big role.”
Laporte is looking forward to developing skills, experience and perspectives to use in building a career in environmental science.
“Just last week I called my Dad. Every year we have problems on the farm with coyotes, and he told me that a coyote had eaten two sheep.
“He asked me ‘what should I do? And I had to say, ‘I don’t know’.”
One day soon, Laporte hopes to have the answer for her father and for others who want to live in better harmony with the land.