Meet our New Team Member – Sheldon Helbert

We are pleased to introduce you to the newest member of our team. Please help us welcome Sheldon Helbert, who has joined us to coordinate the Living by Water program.

Sheldon was born and raised in Montreal, and he has a broad and distinguished background and career in environmental sciences, geography, biology, hydrology, forest ecology and more. His notable education and career path has taken him to many places.

Sheldon completed his bachelor’s degree in geography and biology at Concordia and he worked for the Atlantic Center for the Environment in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Upon receiving a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada award he moved to St. Johns, NL where he participated in a climate change study. Staying at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) he completed a master’s degree on the temporal and spatial distribution of herbicides in a podzol.

He lectured at MUN before working as a hydrologist for the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Environment. While in Newfoundland he also collaborated on research with the Forest Pest Management Institute in Sault Ste. Marie and the Chemistry and Biology Research Institute in Ottawa.

Sheldon later moved to Vancouver to continue his studies in applied forest ecology at University of British Columbia (UBC). While completing his work there he launched his consulting career. Sheldon has consulted with PGL and EBA in Vancouver, and with EBA in Kamloops. While in Kamloops, he also lectured in geography at Two Rivers University.

Sheldon is a past councillor for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, past vice president of the Alberta Lake Management Society, an advisor to community watershed groups and he helped organize the 2010 International Congress for Conservation Biology in Edmonton.

He happily lives in the country under dark skies and, through his consulting business, provides environmental planning, ecology, pedology, education and hydro-climatology services to a large and diverse group of clients. Much of his current work is focused on environmental impact assessments, environmental permitting, a variety of inventory, mapping and assessment types (e.g. wetlands, boreal, species at risk, ecosystem) and ecological restoration.

Sheldon feels the primary challenges in Alberta include overcoming social and political biases that have us locked up as suppliers of primary resources, integrating First Nations knowledge and values into our systems, and generating greater awareness amongst its citizens of the critical role that a properly functioning ecosystem plays in sustaining our quality of life, our cultural heritage and economic sustainability.

We are pleased to have Sheldon putting his years of experience and expertise to work for Nature Alberta and the Living by Water Program. You can connect with Sheldon at sheldon@naturealberta.ca.