Federal scientist sources traditional knowledge – Northern Journal

December 14, 2015

Surrounded by local elders, Ontario farm boy, hunter-trapper-angler and biologist Phillippe Thomas stands in a party tent in a remote Northern community and turns another muskrat inside out.

They could be gathered in any one of 10 villages or hamlets in the oilsands region of Alberta, or upwards of 30 Northwest Territories communities he has brought his work to in the past three years, measuring contaminant levels in furbearing animals.

Organizations Thomas is associated with include Environment Canada’s Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Program and the Strategic Partnership Initiative (SPI), the Slave Watershed Environmental Effects Program (SWEEP) run out of Dr. Paul Jones’ shop at the University of Saskatchewan and the Peace Athabasca Ecological Monitoring Program, to name a few.