Churchill Wild welcomes wildlife storyteller Ian Thorleifson

Ian Thorleifson with polar bear cubs

Churchill Wild is happy to introduce Ian Thorleifson to the Arctic Adventure/Churchill Wild blog readers.

Ian will be contributing a semi-regular column to the blog. He has been on many of Churchill Wild’s polar bear Arctic Safaris – in fact, many of you may have met Ian at the Lodge so you will know what a wealth of amazing stories he is!

Ian is the lead for GEOS Consulting services and has been a friend of Churchill Wild since early on. Born and raised in rural Manitoba, Ian completed a degree in Zoology and Biogeography at the University of Winnipeg.

He worked at biophysical resource inventory and land use planning in northern Manitoba and Ontario, then moved to Churchill for polar bear, moose and caribou management with Manitoba Wildlife Branch.

Ian began raising and marketing cattle, elk, bison, deer and horses in 1986, both on his own ranch and as the manager of large corporate farms in New Brunswick and Alberta. He is the co-author of The Elk Farming Handbook and many articles covering elk, deer and cattle farming.

Since 1987, Ian has been leading ecotours to study and photograph polar bears, birds, and nature in general. Destinations have included Riding Mountain, Churchill, Seal River Heritage Lodge, Dymond Lake Lodge, Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge, Wager Bay, Ungava, the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf of Mexico.

With this background, Ian has become an accomplished and appreciated storyteller and public speaker. He has extensive accomplishments in the Communications field, as a freelance or assignment writer, creating informative magazine and newspaper articles, as a project facilitator and as a communications planner.

We all look forward to Ian’s first column which will posted next week.