For this final speaker’s night of the season, our guest is Greg Kearns, noted naturalist and photographer. By the time he was 17, Greg knew he wanted to work outdoors and, as he puts it, “give back to nature.” In 1979 he had an internship at Patuxent River Park in Croom, MD – and he never really left. For over 28 years now, Greg’s been enjoying his work as naturalist with the park (which falls under the Prince George’s side of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC)).

His role as naturalist extends to being a natural history educator, and Greg has communicated his passion for conservation not just to visitors to the park but also through his seminars for bird clubs and other conservation groups. Greg’s activities as a naturalist also take on other guises: he’s an accomplished photographer, worldwide traveler, and leader of eco-tours here and abroad. His specialty in the natural world is birds, and he’s a renowned authority on the Osprey and Sora Rail, an elusive bird of the marshes. In his decades of research on the bird, he pioneered successful trapping and tagging techniques and innovations in documenting its migrations.

Greg is known as an expert of the wetland ecology of Jug Bay. (Jug Bay is a component of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve under NOAA.) In 2006, he was named conservationist of the year by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources for his work in wetlands habitat restoration, specifically for the restoration of the wild rice marshes on the river, which had been declining since the 1990s, eaten away by resident Canada geese. This restoration, by the way, has been recognized as one of the best wetlands restorations in our state. Greg also received the Jug Bay Award for significant contributions to the environment on the Patuxent.
Greg Kearns is a lucky man. How many of us work so hard and have so much fun doing it!