Staff

Cynthia Brink | NatureHood and Priority Place Program Coordinator

 Cynthia Brink from Chateauguay, Quebec grew up among a family of naturalist and outdoorsmen. Spending most of her developing years exploring her natural world and traveling with her family to exotic places like Peru, Cayman Island and Manaus, Brazil.

She is a mother to four feral children that now resides in Norfolk. With her passion for the natural world she has spent many hours in the field with her children homeschooling them through the use of their surroundings. In her spare time, she works as Administrative support to the St. Williams conservation reserve. She has also worked as the Nature Educator for Nature’s Calling Environmental Education teaching outdoor education and providing interpretive programs to the Provincial Parks in Haldimand and Norfolk areas.

Cynthia joined the Biosphere Reserve in January 2017 as the new NatureHood Coordinator.

Conscious of her impact on the environment Cynthia is always busy making improvements to achieve the goal of a low carbon foot print. Cynthia also enjoys what the Carolinian life zone has to offer in natural attractions. You may cross paths with her while hunting, fishing or harvesting wild foods to feed her family in the hope to be self-sustainable. Always learning and improving herself she continues to take classes on herbology and passive solar home building.

Cynthia can be reached at education@longpointbiosphere.com

Sarah Emons | Conservation Director

Sarah joined the Long Point Biosphere Region in 2022 to work on the Conservation Biodiversity Project.

She has previously worked for Ministry of Natural Resources as a Restoration Ecologist, working on wetland restoration mainly in Norfolk County. Sarah also did her MSc. Thesis research in Norfolk County, studying wetland hydrology with the University of Western Ontario. She received her BSc. from the University of Waterloo, with a focus on freshwater ecology.

Sarah currently lives with her two sons in Southwold Township, where she also serves as a municipal Councillor. She sits on the Board of Directors for the Lower Thames River Conservation Authority and multiple other community committees, including Zero Waste, Young at Hearts and War Veteran Memorial Committee. When not in the Long Point Region Biosphere, volunteering in her home community or spending time with her children, Sarah can be found in the forest with her dog, Scout.

Kari Gunson – Eco-Kare International | Project Manager Road Ecology Working Group

Kari has worked full-time for the past 23 years on road ecology projects with both large and small animals in North America and Mexico. Beginning with 6 years of monitoring work on the wildlife overpasses in Banff National Park (1999 to 2005), she is now the primary road ecologist for planning, designing and monitoring road-wildlife mitigation projects on a provincial and municipal level in Ontario. She has developed best practice guidelines for solutions to alleviate impacts of roads on Canada’s Species at Risk amphibians and reptiles at both a provincial and federal level. Kari also specializes in Geographic Information Science and coins herself as a landscape ecologist. She has developed several methodologies for mapping wildlife core habitat and corridor linkages and overlaying roads to predict wildlife road crossing hotspots. Kari then verifies her mapping exercises with wildlife on road data to recommend context-specific mitigation solutions on roads where turtles and snakes are most threatened by road mortality as documented by research and community-based science (see wildlifeonroads.com) where she highlights her new book and other resources.