Posted at 5:00 am
Caroline Touzin The press
As a child, Amélie Grégoire Taillefer used to take praying mantises for walks in a stroller.
“At home we were not allowed to kill anything alive. I wanted to release the insects outside – including the spiders,” says the 39-year-old biologist and entomologist.
Amélie Grégoire Taillefer spent her childhood on all fours watching bugs in the grove behind her home in Mercier, Montérégie.
An accountant. Technician father at Bell. You don’t need a scientific background to inspire love for animals, even the smallest ones.
That’s probably where his calling comes from.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY SPACE FOR LIFE
Amélie Grégoire Taillefer coordinates the collaborative science project Les Sentinelles du Nunavik.
This summer, the one coordinating the Nunavik Sentinels’ science project is living out of her suitcase.
Ms. Grégoire Taillefer travels back and forth to Nunavik and James Bay where she teaches young Inuit and Crees to identify, preserve and inventory butterflies.
The project, launched in 2019, shows the first impressive results. Although its flight has been slowed by the pandemic, it has already led to the discovery of a subspecies of the virescent butterfly: Colias tyche siaja.
Siaja in honor of Siaja Parceaud-May, the young Inuk who made the extraordinary discovery.
The news didn’t draw much attention when it was revealed in early June, but it’s important nonetheless.
PHOTO DAVID BOILY, THE PRESS
Maxim Larrivee and Amélie Grégoire Taillefer at the Montreal Insectarium
This is the kind of discovery that will allow scientists to assess the impact of climate change on insect fauna and, together with the Nunavik communities, define the actions that need to be taken to help communities prepare for the changes, explains the director of the Montreal Insectarium and one of the initiators of the project, Maxim Larrivee.
Siaja is the first trained guard. The 31-year-old Inuk made this discovery on his first observational voyage, says Mr. Larrivee, emphasizing the word FIRST, while he, the scientist in his 40s, has dreamed of making a discovery like this since he was young, a butterfly net.
In his eyes, the potential of the community science project is immense.
La Presse meets the two entomologists on a rainy July day at the magnificent insect museum that recently reopened in Montreal after a major renovation. Mrs Grégoire Taillefer is in transit “in the south” between two stays in the north.
A job, really?
” I don’t believe you. Is it a real job? »
That’s the unanimous reaction of young people when told the insectarium can hire them for the summer to list the butterflies in their community, says Ms. Grégoire Taillefer.
The approach is serious. Young people have to write a resume, have an interview, get their social security number, open a bank account, and so on.
At the time of the interview, Ms Grégoire Taillefer had just returned from training new posts in Kuujjuaq and Chisasibi in early June.
There’s Robert, 15, a young man of few words and a great talent for spotting insects, for whom this is his first job. And Haylee, 22, who is studying biology in college down south and didn’t find it possible to spend the summer working “at home” in her field.
The project serves the development of young people as well as the documentation of biodiversity.
Maxim Larrivee, Director of the Montreal Insectarium
Although Ms Grégoire Taillefer has been unable to travel north because of the pandemic, she has been making contact with teachers there over the past two years. She gave them distance learning and also sent them training packages.
Today she is reaping the fruits of her efforts. It was one of those teachers who caught teenager Robert’s interest in small animals and helped him land his first dream job.
The scientist – herself a mother of three children – easily “connects” with young people. It has to be said that she looks like a cool young aunt with her arms covered in colorful tattoos – hibiscus.
“I have a bug on my back too,” she clarifies when pointed out that her floral tattoos lack pollinators.
His passion is communicative. She could talk for hours about the diversity of flies in wetlands – her PhD topic at McGill University. “That’s all, flies, we’re going to have predators, parasites, decomposers, pollinators,” she says, eyes shining.
In both North and South, the children she teaches workshops for systematically express disgust – well-felt “wows” – when told they’re going to be watching spiders or moths.
When the little ones don’t literally scream in terror and – wrongly – fear that the moths will bite them.
Then, when the scientist explains to them the connection between insects, plants and the berries they love, their eyes quickly light up.
Extensive program
Currently, we know almost nothing about the insects found in the north, Ms Grégoire Taillefer points out. “There are an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 insect species in the Arctic. But we don’t know which ones yet, she continues. So we have no way of knowing what role they play in the circles there. We also do not know its distribution. »
In other words, to be able to predict what climate changes will affect this fauna; that will have an effect on the plants; She lists that this will have an impact on humans, and that you first have to know which species live in the north.
At the forefront of change
“The Inuit are in no way to blame for climate change, but they are the hardest hit,” laments Mr. Larrivee.
The scientist was shaped by an encounter with an elder in a Nunavik National Park. The latter pointed out to him all the changes observed during his lifetime.
There he pointed to a dry spot that had once been a pond, then to a bird unaccustomed to living so far north, then to a kind of tree that grew where there was no bush before.
Maxim Larrivee, Director of the Montreal Insectarium
In the workshops with the youngest, they should not be frightened by the rapidity of the observed changes in fauna and flora. Rather, the two scientists want to bring them closer to nature and appreciate it so that they want to protect it.
“There will be no societal change until everyone says with one voice: I consider nature important for my health, for my well-being, even for my wallet,” adds Mr. Larrivee.
The first Guardian, Siaja, has already recruited others, motivated by his discovery. If this momentum continues, there will soon be young people in every village in Nunavik and James Bay trained to protect and document the nature around them.