Young Hilliardton Marsh volunteer named Wetland Hero 

DUC is proud to recognize ten-year-old Lucy Harrison as our newest Wetland Hero.  

Harrison has shown great leadership at Hilliardton Marsh, one of DUC’s Wetland Centres of Excellence in New Liskeard, Ont., where she has been volunteering for more than three years. 

When Harrison started at the marsh, she helped enter data into the popular citizen science app, e-Bird. She became not only one of the youngest e-Bird volunteers at the marsh, but one that research and education coordinator Bruce Murphy came to rely on.   

“Very quickly we knew that Lucy was something special,” says Murphy. “Things that are normally difficult for our younger volunteers, she picked them up easily.” 

It wasn’t long before Harrison started helping with other tasks around the marsh, like checking nets and banding birds. Bird banding isn’t normally taught to kids younger than 10, but Lucy proved that she could handle it. 

“We started having her demonstrate how to handle birds for school groups,” says Murphy. “The students’ eyes would light up when they saw her do it. They would think ‘I could do that, too’ and it boosted their confidence.”