Nature Trust Announces Inaugural Recipient of New Don Dennison Award
‘A sense of purpose’
Shraddha vadgama’s global conservation journey honoured with the don dennison award
WRITTEN BY SHANNON MUNRO, COMMUNICATIONS INTERN
From befriending elephants in Thailand and tracking leopards in India, to working on urban forestry in Toronto and developing remote biodiversity monitoring in New Brunswick — the Nature Trust’s Stewardship Coordinator Shraddha Vadgama’s passion for nature extends across continents.
What started as her childhood love for the Discovery Channel, specifically Bear Grylls’ show ‘Man vs. Wild,’ has since evolved into doing invaluable work toward the conservation effort.
Hired nearly five months ago, the Nature Trust of New Brunswick (NTNB) has chosen Vadgama as the inaugural recipient of the newly-created Don Dennison Award — an award that sponsors a new hire in the spirit of former NTNB President, the late Don Dennison.
“I'm so passionate about everything I'm doing here,” she said. “I just love being in nature, and I feel like this also gives us a sense of purpose.”
Vadgama started her education in India with a Bachelor of Science at Sardar Patel University in Gujarat, followed by a Masters in Wildlife and Management at Kuvempu University. Throughout her studies in India, Vadgama worked with a variety of large animals that many would be lucky to see once in their lifetime.
For Vadgama, though, seeing a Tiger on campus was just a casual Tuesday. She said during her masters, tigers and leopards frequently visited her campus and she fondly recalled ‘one crazy night’ when her and a classmate spent a night in a tree staking out a tiger.
“I wanted to see the tiger very badly ... we spent the entire night in the forest climbing the tree,” she said. “We were so scared, we took a lot of stones, big stones, to keep with us just in case.”
“We didn’t see the tiger. We just saw porcupines.”
While the tiger didn’t come that night, she’s had many encounters with big animals, her favourite being the elephant. In Thailand, Vadgama tracked elephants as part of a reintroduction project, where she helped rescue abused elephants and followed their changes in behaviour from captivity to the wild.
Vadgama with an elephant while working on an elephant reintroduction project in Thailand, 2018.
Elephants also have notoriously good memories and can recognize people they’ve met. Shraddha experienced this firsthand, as she recounted an elephant kindly saving her after she fell down a hill one rainy day while tracking in the forest.
“They recognize us very well, because we are following [them] every single day and they are very friendly to us,” she said. “So he just grabbed me with his trunk and lifted me up.”
Vadgama came to Canada in 2021 to complete her second master's at University of Toronto, but because she grew up in a small city near forestland, she opted to come to New Brunswick after graduating.
Now, Vadgama is at the Nature Trust working on some groundbreaking projects for conservation in New Brunswick, like developing autonomous recording units to send data from preserves across the province, or creating remote monitoring systems for the Nature Trust’s less accessible preserves.
No matter where she is, Vadgama’s passion and love for nature is at the forefront of everything she does — and she says everyone should get on board to save nature for younger generations.
“We are getting a lot from Earth and nature, and in some way, we need to replenish them,” she said. “We need to protect nature, because it's not going to protect on its own.”
It is exactly this drive to serve nature that made Vadgama a prime choice to receive the Don Dennison award.
Nature Trust CEO Stephanie Merrill said Vadgama embodies Don’s legacy in the conservation sector — “being an innovator and looking for creative solutions for complex environmental problems.”
“I think he would be quite pleased to know that we are trying to build up the next generation of practitioners who can follow in his footsteps.”
The Dennison Award is possible thanks to the Don G. Dennison Nature Trust of New Brunswick Legacy Fund, established in 2015. After Don’s passing, his family requested that those who wished could donate to the Nature Trust in his memory, which resulted in the Legacy Fund.
While the fund previously sponsored the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Excellence in Land Conservation created by Don in 2015, the fund will be able to support this new Don Dennison Award for five years.
“Having a new, keen, young professional really tackle a challenging aspect of our work is exactly what I think Don and of course, his family, would be proud to support,” said Merrill.
INSPIRING LOVE FOR NATURE
Don is survived by his wife Gail and his two daughters, Christie Dennison and Anne Cullihall.
Both Christie and Anne credit their father with inspiring their love for nature. Through frequent sailing and boating trips he taught them to understand the power of the ocean and let the wind carry them; however, Anne said some of her fondest memories are when he would take them to unexplored pieces of land for picnics, hikes and swims.
Don and Gail Dennison hiking in Lindsay Valley, N.B.
“It would be grass up to our waist,” she said. “He helped us appreciate land that wasn't made beautiful by humans ... but land that was just naturally raw and rough and beautiful on its own.”
Don’s love for nature is evident through his extensive experience working in the field. He worked in New Brunswick’s civil service for 28 years and was deputy minister for 13 years. He worked in the department of Intergovernmental Affairs, Public Safety and Environment.
He also served as a board member for a number of conservation organizations, including the Nature Conservancy of Canada. He got involved with the Nature Trust following his retirement in 2001, where he volunteered for over 10 years, three of which he served as the board president.
“I think he saw a lot of potential in the [Nature Trust], and he sensed a lot of enthusiasm,” said Christie. “That sense that the organization was going to be able to have a real impact was important to him.”
Not only was he passionate about nature, but Anne said he also had an innate ability to get people interested in the issues he cared about, especially nature.
She said the fight for land protection is not an individual effort, but rather a movement that takes many to preserve nature for future generations. It is for this reason that Anne said “he would be proud of the way [the Legacy Fund] is being used.”
“When dad values something, he does something about it,” she said. “We needed people like him, to plant seeds in other people that would continue it. And I think that [the award recipients] are those people.”
“So he's planting more seeds, even from afar and from the other side.”