My conservation journey (so far!)

Hello! I am Unity. I am excited to join the CPAWS-NS team this summer as a Conservation Assistant. I am a fourth-year Biology and Neuroscience student at Dalhousie University and have a passion for protecting the environment and connecting communities to nature.

I was born and raised in Buduburam Refugee Camp in Accra, Ghana. My parents moved to Ghana in 1990 due to the civil war in their home country of Liberia. Growing up in the refugee camp, I often fell ill with malaria. My grandmother would go into the bright green wilderness, pick some plants that she would bring back to the house, boil them, and give me the water to drink. Shortly afterwards, I would begin to feel better. This was how I started to develop an interest in the environment. My family was very connected with nature. We grew a lot of the food we ate and tried to produce almost no food waste. I learned from a young age to appreciate nature because it provided the food, water, shelter, and medicine we needed to survive and thrive.

All my life, I’ve known I wanted to make a difference in this world and combine my love of nature with my desire to help people. I had the opportunity to work with the Society for Conservation of Nature of Liberia (SCNL) and help local communities strengthen their relationship with the forest. I helped SCNL  conduct site visits to collect data and assist in the communication with landowners, the government, and the local community. I remember my excitement and nervousness the first time I led a group of local youths and elders through the wilderness to show them the areas we should protect. We planted some trees and did a BioBlitz with the kids on the mountain to celebrate biodiversity studies. It was such a fulfilling experience to see the group understand the importance of protecting the environment and the benefits of conservation for their livelihoods. I felt like I made a difference and became more committed to working with communities to protect nature.

That’s why I’m very excited to spend the next 8 weeks with CPAWS-NS. Nova Scotia is very rich and diverse in terms of its land, sea, people, history, geology, geography, animals, wild plants, and ecology. Protecting these features is important for generations now and tomorrow and I’m looking forward to being a part of this work.

Stay tuned for more updates on my internship!

Unity