County resident earns national award for connecting wildlife and people

Nina-Marie Lister – Johnny CY Lam photo

A County resident who advocates for co-existence of wildlife and people in healthy, connected landscape design has won a national award.

On Tuesday, Nina-Marie Lister won the Margolese National Design for Living $50,000 prize issued by the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia for being “a Canadian who has made a significant contribution to the built environment, and the people within it”.

She is known for her contributions to designing spaces that make a difference, such as “safe passage” for wildlife crossing infrastructure and for linking ecology with planning and design.

The award website notes her leadership was instrumental in the launch of an interdisciplinary partnership dedicated to reconnecting North American landscapes – one that grew out of the world’s first International Wildlife Crossing Design Infrastructure Design Competition in 2010, directed by Lister, which engaged new thinking, methods, materials and solutions for wildlife crossing structures.

Her work has resulted in several innovative wildlife crossing projects across North America from fibre-reinforced plastic bridges to dual use concepts for people and wildlife including most recently, contribution for the world’s largest wildlife bridge, a “super crossing” in Los Angeles at Liberty Canyon to provide safe passage for the endangered California Mountain Lion and other species at risk across 10 lanes of the Pacific US-101 highway, scheduled to break ground in December 2021.

Lister first came to the County about 17 years ago, and lives with her family on the south shore of PEC and has lent her knowledge and skills locally to a broad number of organizations and citizen groups in PEC. Her Plandform studio, which focuses on working within landscapes and communities for climate resilience, has also worked with the municipality.

Lister leads the Ecological Design Lab at Ryerson’s School of Urban and Regional Planning.

In 2020 the City of Toronto ordered her to cut down the garden in her front yard for violating the city’s long grass and weeds bylaw, the award website notes. Citing her defense of biodiversity, she refused, and launched a year-long campaign of research and public advocacy. Designed and maintained as a meadow that is home to pollinating insects, bees, butterflies, moths, birds and mamals, her Hillcrest meadow is populated with perennial plants and shrubs native to the Toronto area. Her work was instrumental in the 2021 revisions to the city’s bylaw which now includes as-of-right natural gardens on private lands, connecting urban citizens to local landscapes and the biodiversity in their own yards.

The jury citation for the award states: “This recognition will hopefully contribute to the dissemination of her work and ideas, bring to light our unbalanced relationship with other species and their habitats and help to develop sensitive solutions for the future.”