Gilly Hernández

Gilly Hernández was born among the canals and wetlands of Xochimilco, Mexico, although her family moved to Canada while she was still a hatchling. At thirty-two, most of her memories are Canadian ones, but her family made sure Mexico never became merely the place written on her birth certificate. She grew up with both countries woven naturally into family life, along with a fascination with wetlands that began early enough that nobody was particularly surprised when she eventually made them her career.

Gilly works in freshwater conservation, dividing her time between field surveys, habitat monitoring, restoration projects, and the considerably less picturesque paperwork required to make any of those things happen. She's exceptionally good at spotting amphibians, fish, nests, tracks, and tiny changes in a shoreline that most people would walk straight past. Taking a casual hike with Gilly can therefore take significantly longer than advertised. She'll stop mid-sentence, stare into a ditch, and announce the presence of something everyone else requires another thirty seconds to locate.

At home, Gilly lives with her partner, Emma Sinclair, a local schoolteacher she met at a shoreline cleanup. Emma initially asked Gilly a question about something they'd found in the water and received a much longer answer than she'd anticipated. Apparently this worked. Years later, Emma still regularly brings biology questions home from her students, and Gilly still claims she is merely providing educational support rather than enthusiastically preparing a miniature lecture for children she has never met.

Gilly is friendly, observant, and pleasantly low-key. She likes hiking, quiet evenings, good food, and any excuse to be near fresh water. On sufficiently warm days she'll happily spend an unreasonable amount of time floating almost motionless in a pond or lake, an activity she insists counts as appreciating the ecosystem rather than doing absolutely nothing. Emma has stopped arguing the distinction.

For all her expertise, Gilly isn't especially interested in presenting herself as an authority. She's much happier showing someone the tiny world hidden around the edge of a pond and watching them become interested in it too. To Gilly, wetlands aren't empty patches between more important places. They're crowded, complicated neighborhoods full of lives most people simply haven't learned to notice yet.