PUBLISHED BY MANITOBA BEEF PRODUCERS
SEPTEMBER 2022
An overhead view of the Manitoba Beef & Forage Initiatives Inc. Brookdale farm site near Brandon. MBFI recently launched a new podcast to showcase the beef and forage industry – please see the story on page 14 of the newspaper. (Photo credit: Matt Poole/mplocates.ca)
Tim Sopuck: Not Done Advocating For Conservation and the Beef Industry Yet After 43 years in conservation, Tim Sopuck recently retired as CEO of the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation (MHHC), a position he held for 12 years. During that time, Sopuck saw a lot of changes and much progress made in the conservation field. He has also been a tireless advocate for the beef industry, emphasizing the importance of beef production to conservation of wildlife habitat and the environment. Manitoba Beef Producers caught up with him shortly after his retirement to reflect on his career and his future plans. What led you to a career in conservation? I ended up in conservation mainly because my family had a cottage at the lake where I got to go in the summers, and my dad took us fishing and hunting. We
made a connection to the outdoors that way, and when you hunt and fish, you feel keenly the sense that it’s your responsibility to put things back. It was pretty natural to end up in a career in conservation as a result of the opportunities we had growing up to be in the outdoors so much. What path did you take to your career? I got a four-year degree in Zoology at the University of Manitoba and had great summer jobs up north in wild and remote places doing fisheries or wildlife studies. I also spent a year-and-a-half living in Northern Manitoba trapping and doing commercial fishing with Indigenous people. I had all kinds of these additional lived experiences that helped set me up for this career. Where was your first job in conservation and what were your responsibilities? My first full-time job was with Ducks Unlimited
Canada (DUC), where I spent seven years trying to develop wetland conservation projects. A big amount of my time was spent talking to farmers and other land owners to get permission to look at their land, and have discussions about whether or not wetland conservation might work on their farms. It was a humbling period because most of the time, you would drive up to somebody’s door with a DUC sticker on your pick-up truck, and you might hear a thing or two about the problems that people had with water and wildlife before you were able to have a conversation about whether or not there was any conservation possibilities on their farm. It was amazing how many times I found out there were, because so many of the land owners that I dealt with did have an interest in seeing wildlife on their land. Page 2
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BY ANGELA LOVELL