Meet our team!
Mae Elsinger
I studied both Land Reclamation and Rangeland Management at the University of Alberta, where I discovered that I had an aptitude for recognizing different species of plants. In my rangeland and pasture management work with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, I have been able to continue learning about native and tame flowers and grasses. What I am most interested in is their behaviour and what that says about their environment and how they are being influenced by land management. YES plants behave in various ways: they come out only at certain times of year; some don’t like crowds; they have preferences for different moisture regimes; some may be really picky about their germination conditions; and some may be overconfident or aggressive and need intervention to keep them in check.
Rhonda Thiessen
I grew up on the Prairies of Manitoba in a farming family. For over 22 years Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada haves employed me. My work with the Agriculture Ecology Team at the Brandon Research and Development Centre, exposed me to some of the research being done on native and tame flowers and grasses and the establishment of pollinator habitat sites. Seeing the passion of team members towards what nature provided us with sparked an interest in me to seek out what we have on our family farm. It intrigued me to plant native species patches to explore. It has been extremely rewarding observing and photographing nature’s beauty on the landscape cover. It provide serenity to me while increasing my knowledge on plants and pollinators.
Lauren Lee
I am a fourth year undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Sciences and minoring in Economics at the University of British Columbia. One of my interests is public education and in particular, the translation of research into policy and practice. I am also interested in learning about different ecosystems, as Canada is such a vast and diverse country. This summer, I have enjoyed researching plant descriptions for the plant identification guide remotely from Vancouver. I appreciate the opportunity to work as a Co-op student for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on this project.
Finch van Baal
It's been such a pleasure collaborating with the Prairie Plants team as a website builder. I was raised in Ontario, but spent summers in Saskatoon, and have an immense attachment to that landscape. As an animal science student based in Nova Scotia, I might seem like an unusual addition to this team, but I cherish the chance to return to the Prairies (as a remote worker) while I update this database. I want to extend a tremendous thanks to the whole Prairie Plants team, who have provided me with the best crash course in environmental and plant sciences that a person could receive. Equal thanks to Erl Svendsen at AAFC, who took me on as a summer student and entrusted me with such rewarding work.