Maurry Mills is a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and has been stationed at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge since 1985. He is one of the original founders of the Downeast Birding Festival and has served on every planning committee since the festival’s beginning. During his 49-year career with the National Wildlife Refuge system, he also has worked at the Rachel Carson Refuge in southern Maine and the Great Swamp Refuge in New Jersey. He is the state coordinator for the annual American Woodcock Singing Ground Survey and the Breeding Bird Survey. One of his specialties is geospatial technology: He is responsible for maintaining databases and generating maps and reports for the Northern Maine Refuge Complex using GIS and GPS applications.
Maurry has been watching birds and other wildlife since the early 1970s. Although his primary interest is in migratory birds, he has also worked with mammals, herps, and vernal pools, and managed forest, wetlands, and grassland habitats for a wide variety of wildlife species. He has also conducted numerous environmental education, interpretation, and outreach programs. He was the handler and caregiver for Bart, a permanently injured Bald Eagle, for 15 years. During that time he visited all the grammar schools in Washington County and other events throughout the state of Maine, presenting programs on the history and life cycle of the Bald Eagle.
One of his current assignments is finalizing Moosehorn’s Habitat Management Plan, which will guide the Refuge’s course of management over the next 15 years. He is also a licensed amateur radio operator with a station capable of providing emergency communications worldwide during events when standard radio and telephone systems are inoperable. During the first few years of his life, he lived on a family farm on land that is now part of the Great Swamp NWR’s Wilderness Area. He currently resides with his wife Beth, and their French Brittany Sadie, in Dennysville along the Dennys River.
