Owner - Applied Ecologist

Jesse is an applied ecologist who started and has run SwampDonkey since 2010. Jesse specializes in evaluating the efficacy of land use practices and policies to meet their intended goals, and in the development of workable and realistic management and conservation strategies.

Jesse has a broad background working as a wildlife and forest ecologist for a range of organizations including governments, universities, non-profits, and private companies across his 25-year career thus far. He has worked in many roles from a project manager for seismic operations in the Canadian boreal and sub-arctic to a researcher in the upper Amazon basin in Peru. And many places in between.

Jesse focuses on identifying and offering solutions to entrenched management, conservation, and policy challenges that are cost effective, realistic, and fair to all involved. He considers himself pretty good at finding common ground to derive shared value and positive outcomes.

Jesse lives where the “mountains meet the prairies” south of Pincher Creek in Alberta with his wife and three sons. He holds a MSc in wildlife ecology from the University of Alberta.

jesse@swampdonkeysolutions.ca

Applied & Quantitative Ecologist

Nicole is an applied & quantitative ecologist who specializes in the evaluation of ungulates and their predators, wildlife habitat use, and the condition, status, and impacts of anthropogenic and natural disturbances, particularly resource extraction and wildfire.

Nicole has a broad research wildlife research background. They have worked with polar bear, ringed seal, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, wolf, furbearers, beaver, black bear, grizzly bear, and songbirds in arctic, boreal, and mountain ecosystems in BC, Alberta, and the NWT.

Nicole excels at designing, developing, and implementing statistically robust research and monitoring projects; conducting wildlife-focused field work; coding and executing quantitative analyses, and using a variety of statistical and spatial software to understand landscape conditions and patterns, and to answer targeted questions. In their role at SwampDonkey, Nicole works with a variety of rights- and stake-holders, partners, governments, and First Nations to provide clear and robust data analyses and interpretation to support decision making to drive policy and land use planning and management.

Nicole holds a MSc in wildlife ecology from the University of Alberta and currently lives in Victoria, BC, where they are completing a PhD in examining the impacts of forest harvest on calf moose survival, habitat selection of collared moose and wolf, and predator-prey co-occurrences based on camera trapping.

nicole@swampdonkeysolutions.ca