A Conservation Legacy is Recognized on the National Stage

October 27, 2025

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• WLA Archive

AWA’s own Cliff Wallis was honoured for his “dedication to advancing nature conservation and restoration in Alberta, as an esteemed biologist and naturalist.”

By Lindsey Wallis

Read the PDF version here.

 

The hall at the Governor General’s residence is high-ceilinged and ornately decorated with rich, golden-hued curtains. The perfect surroundings to honour the individuals who received the Order of Canada. They include people who have made significant contributions in fields including the arts, medicine, law, philanthropy, Indigenous rights, and sport. AWA’s own Cliff Wallis was honoured for his “dedication to advancing nature conservation and restoration in Alberta, as an esteemed biologist and naturalist.”

I joined my parents in Ottawa on June 25, 2025, for the investiture ceremony for the Order of Canada recipients. While these recipients were recognized in 2023, the investiture ceremony was delayed due to a backlog of recipients after COVID. It was a pleasure to see dad get this well-deserved honour, after decades of work to preserve Alberta’s wild places. As Canada Governor General Mary Simon pinned the red and white snowflake-shaped medal to his lapel, my heart burst with pride to see his passion and dedication recognized. The next day, he was keen to get back to the wilderness and we visited a fen near Ottawa carpeted in pink bog laurels and tamarack, with thrush calls echoing through the woods. And filled with voracious deer flies. He was in his element.

Cliff is a proud self-described prairie lover. His love for these landscapes is immediately apparent to anyone lucky enough to spend time tromping the grasslands with him. One of my favourite memories is camping at the Milk River Natural Area about 15 years ago when he was doing bird surveys. The Milky Way painted a glorious spatter of stars across a velvet black sky. In the pre-dawn I crawled out of the tent and breathed deeply of the dewy sagebrush. As we walked across the damp prairie, dad began rattling off birds. Before I had even honed in on the distant bird he heard calling he was pointing another direction with another bird species. “Clay-coloured sparrow, Brewer’s sparrow, vesper sparrow, Sprague’s pipit…” and the list went on.

His career started in the ‘70s for Alberta Parks — doing inventories and ultimately looking for possible locations to expand Alberta’s protected areas network. Visiting so many locations gave him a solid grounding in the landscapes of the province, especially in Southern Alberta. Later, he struck out with his own company, Cottonwood Consultants. In addition to his work as an environmental consultant, he has donated countless hours to conservation organizations including AWA, Nature Canada, FSC, Milk River Management Committee, Environmental Law Centre and many more. He has also been heavily involved in caribou subregional planning committees.

His current work usually involves holding companies accountable at Alberta Utilities Commission hearings. As he says, “sometimes the (environmental) consultants are good, and sometimes they lie.” His decades of knowledge about these landscapes and keen eye on the ground make sure the commission has all the facts to make the best possible decisions about where to put these developments on the landscape.

Cliff leaves many legacies from his tireless work to protect Alberta’s wilderness. He looks back on the creation of the Milk River Natural Area and subsequently the Milk River Management Committee as one of the most important wins of his career. The arrangement is like nothing else in Alberta, an area being managed as rangeland, but with a focus on ecological health and diversity, not the number of animal units it can support.

Another key moment in his career was his involvement with Friends of the Oldman. The group not only raised awareness of environmental issues among the general public (including a fundraising concert with 10,000 attendees), but also eventually changed environmental assessment law in Canada, through their legal fight, which they took all the way to the Supreme Court. It also connected the conservation community with Indigenous activists, a connection he continues to foster through his volunteer work. The recently organized Wild Buffalo Summit is working to bring bison back to their ancestral prairie home.

You’ll continue to see Cliff, known to his longtime friends as the Blonde Bomber, bombing across the grasslands, and Eastern Slopes, up to the boreal fens and the aspen parkland. If you’re lucky, you may join him on an Adventure for Wilderness. He knows where the lady slippers like to grow, where the horned lizard like to hang out, and where Shrike Alley is located, and he is always happy to share his knowledge and passion with those who share his love for Wild Alberta.