WATERLOO — University student Shailyn Drukis is happiest when she's camping in the Yukon wilderness.

After a day of catching, weighing and releasing red-backed voles and deer mice for an ecological monitoring program, she's ready to relax with a book in her tent.

"Often in the summer in the Yukon, I do not even need a head lamp because the sun never sleeps," says Drukis, 25.

"I snuggle up in a sleeping bag in my tent and I'm happy."

Throw in the aurora borealis, with its hues of green and pink, and life doesn't get much better.

"They're breathtaking, they're vibrant, they dance," she says. "You feel at peace.

"I'm always just blown away by the natural world."

Tenting in the wilderness is the most natural thing in the world for a young woman who grew up with a tent peg in her hand and who today is an energetic protector of the Earth's biodiversity.

This week, the Wilfrid Laurier University student left for Australia where she will be one of only 30 young people from around the world to be part of a workshop for youth that takes place before the World Parks Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The congress, where she's also a busy participant, is a landmark global forum on protected areas that is held every 10 years. International experts assess measures taken to conserve the world's biodiversity and the role that protected areas play.

"Though we have more land protected, there are more species at risk," says Drukis, who has been named a "global youth ambassador" at the congress.

Drukis credits her family's camping trips for getting her excited about the outdoors, especially for provincial parks and their wealth of flora and fauna.

Tenting with her mother, father and brother at MacGregor Point Provincial Park near Port Elgin and Pinery Provincial Park near Grand Bend are among her favourite memories of growing up in Waterloo, she says.

When she was a teen, she and her father would load up their tents and sleeping bags and bicycle from campground to campground.

"I always feel most content out in nature where the only thing that's between you and wilderness is a tent wall," she says.

"I became interested in provincial parks and went to interpretive programs in the park. I started to realize how much research is being done in protected areas."

Drukis's early passion for nature laid the foundation for her education at WLU where she's in her final year of an environmental studies program.

It has also made her feel strongly about protecting and preserving the world's biological diversity and involving young people like herself in the work ahead.

Most of the world's governments have agreed to meet biodiversity conservation targets by 2020. The targets call for at least 17 per cent of the world's terrestrial areas and 10 per cent of marine areas to be conserved by 2020.

But the response to the "biodiversity crisis" is inadequate so far, and a "massive scaling up" of work is needed, the IUCN reported recently.

Drukis, soft-spoken and articulate, feels the urgency to protect nature.

"It's vital, especially these days, I feel we're more isolated from nature," she says. "We're more dependent on technology.

"I know that a lot of youth could list a million TV shows and characters but not a bird in their backyard."

To help change that, Drukis volunteers with a local naturalists program for about 25 children. They took a net to a stream recently and looked at aquatic insects, fish and frogs. She co-founded the Laurier Naturalists Club whose members hike in Kitchener's Huron Natural Area.

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She has worked as a park naturalist at Grundy Lake Provincial Park, south of Sudbury, where she led wetland hikes and encouraged campers to keep a species checklist. She returned some baby Blanding's turtles, a species at risk, to the water after they'd been hatched.

"I loved the role of interpreter. I allowed me to help people build a personal connection with nature," she says.

She fell in love with the Yukon, particularly Kluane National Park, while working as a trail guide co-ordinator and doing research for her thesis. She's in awe of its plants and wildlife and its vast nonpolar ice field over which she has flown.

"It looks like a giant sheet of ice with mountaintops peeking out of the ice."

Last summer, she worked for Environment Yukon in Whitehorse where she led a team of post-secondary students on detailed ecological monitoring projects. They tented in the wilderness while they captured, weighed and released salmon, voles and deer mice, and counted berry species and snowshoe hare scat. They saw caribou, elk, black bears, a grizzly bear, a "majestic" lynx.

Further afield, Drukis represented Canadian youth at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity in India in 2012 and in Japan in 2010. In Japan, she co-founded the "global youth biodiversity network" which has members in 76 countries.

Almost as soon as she returns from Australia, Drukis heads to Norway in December to present her undergraduate thesis at the Arctic Biodiversity Congress.

She's on more environment-related boards, teams and organizations than most people twice her age. She's determined to boost young people's connections with nature.

"I was invited to be the first youth board member on the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication," she says.

It's a lot of work and a lot of time away from the university lecture hall, and Drukis says she wouldn't be able to do it without the support of the university and professors who appreciate that learning is not confined to the classroom.

"I'm very thankful to Laurier," Drukis says. Professors have helped her integrate her international experiences in her research and assignments. And the university is among contributors helping to pay the cost of attending forums, she says.

Drukis's thesis adviser, Scott Slocombe, says he's a "big supporter" of the idea that education also happens off campus.

"It is not just about school," says Slocombe, a WLU professor of geography and environmental studies. "You learn lots by being involved with real organizations and travelling and attending meetings. It complements the school a lot."

Slocombe says he's impressed that Drukis is just as involved at home as she is internationally.

"One of her strengths is her commitment to local involvement as well as the global," he says.

"Many people get involved in these global high-profile initiatives ... but she also stays involved with young naturalists' programs and campus naturalists' programs right here."