About Isabelle Groc
Isabelle Groc is a writer, conservation photographer, documentary filmmaker, book author, and speaker based in Vancouver, Canada. She focuses on environmental science, wildlife natural history and conservation, endangered species, marine mammals and ecosystems, climate change, and the changing relationships between people and the natural world. She aims to create stories that increase our understanding and awareness of conservation issues and inspire change.
Originally from the South of France, Isabelle has a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
With her dual background in photojournalism and urban planning, Isabelle brings a unique perspective in documenting the impacts of human activities on threatened species and habitats. She has travelled to remote places to raise the profile of many little-known, elusive, under-appreciated threatened species, aiming to inspire concern and action for their conservation.
As a photojournalist, Isabelle works closely with conservation groups and scientists to create visuals and narratives that help educate the public and guide environmental and policy change.
She also gives numerous public presentations for various audiences on species at risk, wildlife and conservation photography. She particularly enjoys presenting in the classroom and in the field, engaging audiences from Kindergarten to grade 12, and inspiring children and youth to connect to the natural world and protect endangered wildlife. She is a keynote speaker for various organizations and events.
Isabelle’s stories and photographs have appeared in National Geographic News, BBC Wildlife, Canadian Wildlife, Scientific American, New Scientist, and many other publications worldwide.
Isabelle is the author of three award-winning non-fiction children’s books published by Orca Books: Gone is Gone: Wildlife under Threat with foreword by Jane Goodall (Fall 2019), Sea Otters: A Survival Story, with foreword by Dame Judi Dench and David F. Mills (April 2020) and Conservation Canines: How Dogs Work for the Environment with foreword by Anjelica Huston (September 2021).
Isabelle has also directed and written videos for National Geographic and written and co-directed several documentary films on British Columbia’s species at risk, profiling scientists in the field. Her films have been screened at environmental and wildlife film festivals, nature events, educational institutions, and science museums around the world. Isabelle’s documentary film Toad People won the prestigious 2018 Wildscreen Impact Panda Award.
Isabelle was awarded several environmental reporting fellowships, including the Sagebrush Country Institute fellowship from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, the Puget Sound Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources fellowship, the Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment fellowship, and the Great Waters Institute fellowship from the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. In 2019, Isabelle was awarded the Guerry Beam Memorial Reporting Award by the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources to cover kelp conservation in California. She has also received three COMPASS journalist fellowships in 2011, 2014, and 2015. In 2011 Isabelle was awarded a Silver Award in the Public Issues category by the International Regional magazine Association (IRMA) Awards for her article “Orca Encounters” published in British Columbia Magazine.
Her wildlife photography achievements have been honoured through the 2005 CBC David Suzuki Nature in Focus Environmental Photography Competition and the 2010 Art Wolfe International Conservation Photography Awards. She has been a finalist in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition several times.
She is a Fellow of the Explorers Club, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Association of Science Writers, and the North American Nature Photography Association.
Watch a film produced by videographer Lesley Spinks who followed Isabelle in the field to document her daily life as a wildlife photographer, travelling in a variety of habitats, land, water, rivers, and the desert, looking for wild creatures, rattlesnakes, shorebirds, snow geese, barn swallows, Pacific salmon, and humpback whales.