I grew up with one foot in the city of Montreal and the other in the countryside of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. The region’s forests and fields were both my playgrounds and my places of discovery, and every visit connected me with nature. I developed an intimate relationship with the environment’s plant and animal inhabitants. But over the decades, I have observed relentless development and urban expansion within the Eastern Townships, particularly around the cities of Magog and Sherbrooke. Meadows have been replaced by industrial parks; forests have turned into cottages; lakes have become less accessible due to the near-total privatization of their shores. 

During the pandemic, like many others, I left the city. I moved from Montreal to the Eastern Townships, where my close contact with development only heightened my sense of helplessness in the face of the climate crisis and increasing habitat loss. I sought a way to overcome this helplessness and take action. So, in 2021, I started a long-term documentary photography project focused on the intersection of science and community. The goal of the project has been to document conservation initiatives that involve everyday citizens, in direct or indirect ways.

Chelsey Paquette, a conservation coordinator at the Zoo de Granby, was the first person I reached out to for the project. The selected photographs in this essay primarily feature the snow buntings Paquette and her team have been banding since 2020. With the help of dedicated volunteers, Paquette captures these birds in the Eastern Townships and collects data on their behaviour.

Snow buntings breed in the northern Arctic, and in the winter they migrate in flocks by the hundreds to southern Canada and the northern United States. These hardy little birds are well-adapted to winter conditions, often seen on the ground in cornfields, huddled and shuffling to try and conserve heat. Unfortunately, the North American snow bunting population has declined by about sixty percent over the past forty years. 

Scientists who want to better understand the causes of this decline have begun to study the species in Canada in greater depth. However, tracking the movements of a highly nomadic migratory species over such great distances requires a lot of time, and a lot of hands. To improve this tracking, the Canadian Snow Bunting Network has established a web of scientists and community members, including Paquette and her team, who follow and document the winter behaviours of snow buntings across the country. Paquette’s team’s study sites are located on private agricultural land, which the owners have graciously allowed the scientists—and myself—to access over the course of the study.

This project has become a kind of therapy that has helped me cope with eco-anxiety. I have made connections with others who feel similarly about environmental issues in the region, joining a chain of ecologically minded action through photography. By sharing my personal journey of mobilization, I want to inspire others and create a spark of hope. If we are to face the kind of crises we will need to face to protect the places we live in and the species we live among, we will need to move from “I” to “we.” 

Alexi Hobbs is a documentary and commercial photographer based in Montreal. His projects often take him through eastern Canada and the northeastern United States, to Nunavik and across the pond to Europe. His editorial clients have included the New Yorker, Air Canada enRoute, Monocle, TIME, the New York Times, the FADER, M le Magazine du Monde, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Bon Appétit, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Guardian, GQ and the Walrus.