This Quarter at Trebek
Issue #6
| December 17, 2025
IN THIS ISSUE:
This milestone edition marks five years of the Trebek Initiative and highlights our first fifty projects carried out across Canada. From coastal inlets and northern rivers to forested valleys, these projects help Canadians look more closely at their landscapes, the species that depend on them, and the stories that shape our shared history. Across the country, Trebek Grantees bring important issues into focus and work with local communities to understand the places they know best.
TREBEK FUNDS FIRST FIFTY: On December 15, Jill Tiefenthaler, Chief Executive Officer of the National Geographic Society, joined leaders from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and members of the Trebek community to reflect on the Initiative’s first five years and the people whose work is shaping what comes next. Meet Our Grantees
FIVE YEARS, FIFTY PROJECTS: Explore an interactive map of all fifty projects supported over the past five years. Each location offers a brief look at the work underway across four focus areas: Land, Water, Wildlife, and History and Culture.
FIVE NEW GRANTS SELECTED: This year, the Trebek Initiative launched a special call for National Geographic Explorers working in Canada. Learn more about the five new projects selected for funding.
SCALING SUCCESS IN FIRE MANAGEMENT: 2023 Grantee Kira Hoffman continues her Trebek-supported work with the Gitanyow Nation, now supported by new federal funding. In 2025, the Gitanyow Guardians trained a second Indigenous Nation, helping share cultural burning knowledge and supporting local wildfire preparedness.
TREBEK FUNDS FIRST FIFTY
Across Canada, environments are shifting. Wildlife is under pressure, and cultural knowledge that once guided communities is becoming harder to carry forward as familiar landscapes change. What communities understand locally can be missed elsewhere unless it is documented and shared.
The Trebek Initiative was created in 2021 to support the people who make this work visible and help Canadians stay connected to the places they call home.
Five Years, Fifty Projects, One Shared Mission
Jill Tiefenthaler, Chief Executive Officer of the National Geographic Society, speaking about the importance of the Trebek Initiative and its impact across Canada.
In partnership with the National Geographic Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Trebek Initiative supports fieldwork and storytelling that reveal what is unfolding across Canada’s landscapes, wildlife, waters, history and culture.
Five years later, we are marking a meaningful milestone. The Initiative has now supported fifty projects spanning every province and territory, led by researchers, Indigenous knowledge keepers, filmmakers, photographers, educators, and conservation leaders. Their work uncovers new science, documents fragile ecosystems, highlights emerging solutions, and supports the sharing of cultural knowledge.
On December 15, Jill Tiefenthaler, Chief Executive Officer of the National Geographic Society, joined leaders from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Trebek community to look back on these first five years. Our first fifty projects reflect the curiosity, dedication, and collaborative spirit that continue to honour Alex Trebek’s legacy.
Nick Hawkins shared how Trebek support is helping him document the pressures facing Atlantic salmon and to bring their story to audiences across Canada.
Trebek Grantees joined National Geographic Explorers at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society office for the National Geographic regional meeting in April, underscoring the strength of the partnership and their shared commitment to support exploration across Canada.
Explore an interactive map of all fifty projects supported by the Trebek Initiative over the past five years. Each location provides a brief look at work underway in one of our four focus areas: Land, Water, Wildlife, and History and Culture.
🔽 Scroll down to view the map. Hover over a point to learn more about each project.
FIVE YEARS, FIFTY PROJECTS
Project Focus Area:
Land
Water
Wildlife
History & Culture
FIVE NEW GRANTS SELECTED
New funding supports National Geographic Explorers active in Canada.
ARIEL WALDMAN (Ontario, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut)
Open Video Library of Canadian Microorganisms
Microbial life is the foundation of every ecosystem on Earth, critical for human health, forming the base of food webs and driving essential nutrient cycles in the environment, and yet it remains largely invisible and overlooked. Working alongside Dr. Jackie Goordial from the University of Guelph, Ariel will create a free Creative Commons video library showcasing microorganisms in Canada. The videos, shared with clear explanations, will help people appreciate the vital role microbes play in Earth’s ecosystems and provide a new resource for Canadian microbiologists.
ANNIE SAKKAB (Quebec)
Disposable Forests: The Boreal Forest Sacrificed for Softness
Canada’s boreal forest serves as a massive carbon sink, storing the equivalent of twice the world’s annual carbon emissions, and provides habitat for countless species, including the threatened boreal caribou and billions of migratory birds. For millennia, it has also sustained the cultural, spiritual, and material lives of more than 600 Indigenous communities. Yet today, this ancient forest is being logged at an alarming pace to make disposable consumer products, especially toilet paper and tissues. Annie’s photography project aims to raise awareness of the destruction of boreal forests to produce toilet paper products. She will work in tandem with local activists and partners groups to drive awarness, policy change and influence consumer choices.
RYAN TIDMAN (British Columbia)
Rise of the Marmot
Rise of the Marmot is a short documentary about the dramatic comeback of the Vancouver Island marmot, once reduced to fewer than 30 wild individuals. Following a young captive-born marmot released into a recovering colony, the film blends striking natural history footage with stories from scientists, Indigenous knowledge holders, and conservation teams. Intimate and hopeful in tone, it highlights how dedicated stewardship is helping restore one of Canada’s most endangered species to its mountain home.
MAIA WIKLER (British Columbia)
A Nation's Fight to Remember: Ancient Forests as Living Memory for the Ma'amtagila
On Vancouver Island, logging is destroying some of the world’s last ancient temperate rainforests—ecosystems vital to the Ma’amtagila Nation’s identity, culture, and ancestral history. As old-growth trees are felled, culturally significant sites such as CMTs and bentwood burial boxes are being lost. Maia will develop a photo essay and documentary that follows Ma’amtagila leaders, archaeologists, and forestry scientists as they work to locate and protect ancestral evidence in the remaining old-growth forests and reconnect Ma’amtagila youth with their culture, while supporting the Nation’s legal fight to reclaim their unceded territory.
DORIAN GABORIAU (Quebec and Atlantic Canada)`
Deciphering the natural variability of past forest landscapes and fire regimes: a meta-analysis based on lake sediment records from eastern Canada
Extreme fire seasons are becoming more common in North America’s boreal forests due to climate change, threatening major global carbon stores. To understand how these forests have historically responded to environmental shifts, Dorian’s project will analyze lake sediments (using charcoal and pollen) to reconstruct long-term fire and vegetation histories. By collecting sediment records from understudied regions in southern Quebec and conduct a large-scale synthesis of existing paleoecological fire data from eastern Canada, the resulting datasets will clarify broad ecological patterns and help inform future forest management and conservation strategies by improving predictions of boreal forest resilience under climate change.
SCALING SUCCESS IN FIRE MANAGEMENT
Kira Hoffman expands her Trebek-supported project into a model for wildfire resilience grounded in Indigenous leadership.
Forests across British Columbia are under pressure from climate change. For generations, Indigenous Nations used cultural burning to renew ecosystems and protect their communities, but these practices were suppressed for more than a century. That history became the challenge that sparked Kira Hoffman’s project, Fighting Fire with Food.
With support from the Trebek Initiative, Kira partnered with the Gitanyow Nation to study how cultural burning supports forest health, food security, and local fire prevention. Together, they brought traditional knowledge and ecological science together to document how intentional fire can restore biodiversity and reduce wildfire risk.
This work is expanding. With new federal support, the Gitanyow Guardians trained a second Indigenous Nation in 2025, sharing knowledge, methods, and mentorship. The program is a model for Indigenous-led fire stewardship that strengthens community wildfire preparedness, benefits food security and helps build local networks of expertise. Explore the full story.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Don’t miss the chance to engage with National Geographic Explorers through events across Canada, offering unique opportunities to connect and discover the impact of their work.
February 8-10, 2026 | Toronto, ON
NG Live – Doug Smith: Wild Wolves of Yellowstone
Witness the beauty and wonder of Yellowstone National Park with wildlife biologist Doug Smith, who led the reintroduction of wolves in this legendary American landscape.
March 22-24, 2026 | Toronto, ON
NG Live - Nalini Nadkarni: From Roots to Canopy
Climb into the clouds with tree canopy ecologist Nalini Nadkarni to experience the world's hidden in the treetops above our heads.
February 12, 2026 | Vancouver, BC
NG Live – Tracy Drain: Cosmic Adventures
Explore our cosmic neighborhood with aerospace engineer and National Geographic Explorer Tracy Drain. Drawing on two decades at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Drain shares how robotic spacecraft reveal the mysteries of our solar system and beyond, from rovers on Mars to the Europa Clipper mission now headed for Jupiter.
April 21, 2026 | Vancouver, BC
NG Live - Steve Ramirez: Untangling the Mind
Join neuroscientist and National Geographic Explorer Steve Ramirez as he uncovers how memories form, fade, and shape who we are. His cutting-edge research with mice reveals how targeted memory work could one day help reduce the impact of PTSD and depression.
Follow us on Instagram @trebekinitiative
THANK YOU
Your commitment fuels our Trebek Grantees’ efforts to make a meaningful impact across Canada, whether they’re uncovering solutions to urgent challenges, preserving cultural heritage, or inspiring the next generation of scientists, storytellers, and educators.
Together, we’re igniting a passion to preserve across Canada.
