Josh Vandermeulen once crisscrossed Ontario in search of birds, now he leads others on similar journeys both at home and abroad
A Cambridge-born naturalist has turned his passion for the limitless potential for knowledge of the natural world into a career which has taken him to many parts of the world.
At one time, Josh Vandermeulen worked for an engineering firm after doing his undergrad in ecology at the University of Guelph. Now now he leads nature tours in Ontario and internationally, turning his passion into a living.
In a phone interview, Vandermeulen explained his passion began young at his home in south Galt where there was a vacant lot full of nature.
“I would spend hours out there just wandering around looking for praying mantises and bugs and snakes and whatever seven-year-olds are interested in,” he said.
He initially was hooked on reptiles and amphibians, referred to as herps, and as soon as he had his driver’s licence took off around the province to see all of the 50 species of herps in Ontario. A newly-discovered species called the Canadian toad, found in remote areas of far northwestern Ontario, is the only one he has not encountered yet.
The eastern massassauga rattlesnake remains one of his favourite species in Ontario, and finds their evolution to have potent venom to be fascinating although he clarifies the snakes are not aggressive towards humans.
While at university, he joined a wildlife club where he met his wife and segued into birding, the recreational observation of wild birds.
This culminated in 2012 with him taking on what the birding community calls a big year, a challenge among birders to identify as many species of birds as possible in a single calendar year and within a specific geographic area.
Vandermeulen set a record at the time seeing 343 species in Ontario, which broke the record set in 1996.
“I crisscrossed the province in my old beater car, I made it all the way up to the James Bay Coast on a couple of occasions,” he said. “One of the most amazing things was just meeting so many generous members of the birding community. The number of people that said ‘oh if you’re even in my area, you know, you can stay up at our place.’”
The record has since been broken a few times, most recently by a young birder he’s friends with who set it at 359 species, which he said is for the best as “records are meant to be broken.”
After university, he worked full-time as an ecologist for an engineering firm where he primarily did environmental surveys for proposed future development.
He said he learned a lot over seven years but ultimately felt it was a little soulless and felt burnout in that industry.
He and his wife decided in summer 2019 to quit their jobs and take a few years to travel the world, which went well until the pandemic hit which sent them back to Canada for a while to places such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Panama and Costa Rica.
“It ended up being two-and-a-half years that we were travelling and it was absolutely amazing learning about different cultures, learning Spanish and about different ecosystems and the ecology of different parts of the world,” he said.
He remains a freelance environmental consultant, usually doing specialty bird surveys, and does some online teaching but has also started a day trip nature tours in Ontario through his company Onshore Birding and also occasionally leads international nature expeditions through Worldwide Quest.
Vandermeulen said he feels fortunate to be able to turn his passion into a career and continues to be fascinated by the limitless potential for knowledge in this area.
“The more you get into it, the more you realize that everything is connected,” he said. “The birds are connected to the environment and the moths are connected to the trees and everything forms this ecosystem. It’s really interesting to try to unravel that web and figure it out.”