A team player and top-notch conservationist

“Busy as a bee” is an apt description of Manitoba DUC volunteer Tammy Molinski. The fact that she’s about to become a beekeeper only helps seal the deal.

Molinski works full-time as a project controls co-ordinator and risk administrator at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. She is a mother to two teenage boys, loves to garden with her husband and in addition to bees, will soon be raising chickens on the family’s property near the town of Beausejour.

And Molinski is a true-blue DUC volunteer of six years with the Beausejour and area chapter, three as chair.

“Her enthusiasm is over the top,” says Brad Porath, DUC’s manager volunteer fundraising in Manitoba. “Under Tammy’s leadership, the net dollars raised by the chapter have more than doubled, and they have sold out their event. Community engagement is key: they’ve maintained two youth events per year, as well as a scholarship program for the local high school. They just added a youth and ladies learn to shoot event in the fall.”

Molinski admits that at first, she “wasn’t thrilled” when her husband volunteered her to become the chair, a role she knew little about. But the volunteers she worked with soon won her over. “Each one brought something different to the group and we have grown into a great chapter,” says Molinski.

“My biggest reward from being a volunteer is meeting the different and unique people who are drawn to conservation,” she adds. “And it’s allowed me to understand how important wetlands are…to the health and continued existence of our ‘wet and wild’ places.”