Rina’s childhood love of animals turned into a passion for wildlife conservation after reading Dr. Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man. She earned a B.Sc. in Biology and an M.Sc. in Animal behavior, then went on to work as a conservation biologist for several international NGOs around the world.
In the field, she hand-raised baby parrots and released them back to the wild, monitored nestlings in treetops of the Mauritian rainforest, explored remote landscapes of Madagascar searching for an elusive little-known mongoose, and studied the world’s rarest hawk in the Caribbean. She has published twenty scientific papers and given seminars on her research here in Canada and abroad.
When Rina’s kids were very young, her family moved to Madagascar and lived there for seven years. It was an experience unlike anything else.
Rina returned to Canada in 2016 and began writing stories as a way to connect young people to nature. She is an associate member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers (CANSCAIP), and is a two-time Canada Council for the Arts literary grant recipient.
She lives in Guelph, Ontario with her partner Lance, who is Executive Director of the not-for-profit Wildlife Preservation Canada, their two teenage boys, a mini dachshund, and a rescued royal python.
Click here to read about one of Rina’s adventures in Madagascar.
Rina Nichols 