Bernard J. McHugh - "Bernie"

    Born in 1952 in Watertown, Mass., Bernie grew up in a place where "Silent Spring" was real.  The only wild animals he remembers from his childhood are squirrels, pigeons and the Mallards at Norumbega Park.  Everything else in the neighborhood had been poisoned.  He has vivid memories of the Charles River as a stinking and quite colorful waterway, thanks to the local plastic and dye plants.  He also can't remember a time when he didn't know what a knee kicker was.
 
    Thus, until he married field botanist and land stewardship planner Frances Clark in 1983 and was obliged to start spending some time out-of-doors, he literally thought all the wildlife was in Africa.  His "transformative nature experience", if it can be termed such, was seeing his first Wood Duck (not Woodchuck) at Great Meadows in Concord in 1984.  That led him into the seedy underworld of birding, from which he has yet to emerge.  Bernie has seen more than 600 North American bird species.  His most recent "lifer" was the elusive Bristle-thighed Curlew, seen 70 miles north of Nome.  He regularly dreams about sea ducks.
 
    Bernie's academic career was markedly undistinguished.  He graduated from Watertown High in 1970 and in 1974 wrestled a B.A. in Communications from the grasp of the Registrar at the University of New Hampshire.  A glance at his transcript reveals that he has credits in Astrology and Utopian Systems, along with more arcane subjects such as Organizational Management.
 
    Bernie owns W.J. Grosvenor & Co. Inc., a wholesale distribution business which sells floor covering supplies, where he has worked since 1975. (Actually, since 1962 but since he was only 10, we don't want OSHA to know about that.)  In 1996, he restructured the business to take himself out of daily operations so he could expand his volunteer conservation work. The company now pays him not to show up and mess around with things he doesn't understand anymore.  His management techniques owe much to the books "Up the Organization" and "Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun".
 
    Since 1999, he has served on a volunteer basis as the Coordinator for the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition, an association of over 100 land and water conservation groups dedicated to promoting land protection in the Commonwealth.  He also serves as Citizen Education Coordinator for the Environmental League of Massachusetts (ELM). In both capacities, he does communications and advocacy work on behalf of the state's land trusts and environmental groups.  He was named the "Citizen Activist of the Year" in 2003 by ELM.  He is co-founder of the Religious Lands Conservancy Project, which works with religious communities to protect their lands from development.
 
    He currently serves on the Boards of the Environmental League of Mass. and the Mass. Outdoor Heritage Foundation and is on the Advisory Councils of Mass Audubon and the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences.  He is a former Board member of Manomet, Sudbury Valley Trustees, Lincoln Land Conservation Trust, and Crystal Spring Center for Earth Education and has served on the Land Trust Alliance's National Land Trust Council, the Putnam Conservation Institute Advisory Council, and as an Overseer of the New England Wildflower Society.  He also works with a East African safari outfitter to provide guides and naturalists in Tanzania with binoculars, computer equipment and conservation education funds and supports conservation groups in Russia and the Rockies.  

And occasionally, he shows up unannounced at W.J. Grosvenor & Company and scares the hell out of everybody...