2021 EE 30 Under 30 Changemaker Grant Project
Generation Wild: An Exploration of Youth-led Conservation in Canada (with Erinn Drage)

Generation Wild is an online educational digital media series designed to showcase the work of young Canadian environmentalists as they seek to address and mitigate the biggest environmental issues impacting our planet; the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

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EE 30 Under 30 Biography

Connel is a British/Canadian conservationist currently living in British Columbia, Canada. He works as a Wildlife Education Manager for Northwest Wildlife Preservation Society, where he has set up and now runs free wildlife education programs and nature walks young people on Vancouver Island, his programs have reached over 35000 people.

Connel graduated with a BSc (hons) in Wildlife Conservation from Nottingham Trent University. Whilst at University he conducted research, that looked into the impact boat distance has on orca surface behaviour. He started volunteering in conservation aged 12, and began at the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, from there he volunteered with the RPSB and now volunteers in bird and orca conservation programs in Canada.

Connel is a founding member of a new youth conservation organisation, Youth for Wildlife Conservation and was chosen as part of a youth delegation for outstanding youth conservation leaders at the 2016 CITES in South Africa.

Additionally he is a keen wildlife blogger, and has contributed to a number of websites including Wildlife Articles, Gay Star News, A Focus on Nature and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. His personal blog 'Talk of the Wild' was highly commended by BBC Wildlife Magazine in their Wildlife Blogger of the Year awards in 2015 & 2016, and he has been featured in their magazine as ‘Blogger of the Month’, where he wrote about the temperate rainforests of Vancouver Island. In 2017 he won an Outstanding Youth Leadership award from the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication and was included in Canada’s Top 25 Environmentalists Under 25 by The Starfish Canada.