Monomoy Refuge Manager Leaving Position; Future Of Post Uncertain

CHATHAM – Rick Nye, the current manager of the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, will be leaving the position at the end of the month. Pending further review, and given the upcoming change in presidential administrations, the prospect of an on-site manager for the refuge continuing in the future is anything but certain.

 After Nye leaves Dec. 28, the 7,000-plus acre refuge will be overseen by Grace Bottitta-Williamson, project leader of the Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex. The complex includes eight refuges, including Monomoy, and is headquartered in Sudbury. 

 Refuge officials are reviewing the situation with an eye toward prioritizing resources, Bottitta-Williamson said.

 Relations between the town and refuge have sometimes been rocky, but having a local manager certainly helps maintain communications, said Select Board member Shareen Davis. 

 “We need hands-on there,” she said. “I hope they bring Chatham to the table and talk to us about their decision making.”

 Town staff members met with Nye, Bottitta-Williams and refuge biologist Eileen McGourty last week, for a review of the 2024 season, according to Natural Resources Director Greg Berman. The annual meetings are a requirement of a memorandum of understanding between the town and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Recent communication between the town and refuge has been excellent, Berman said.

 “Rick, in particular, has always been quick to pick up the phone with a ‘how can we work together’ attitude,” he said in an email. “He’s been a great partner and leaves behind big shoes to fill.”

 Nye has overseen a transformative and difficult period during the refuge’s 80-year history. Erosion was already carving away at the bluff at the refuge’s Morris Island headquarters property when he arrived in 2021. In his first week on the job, the National Weather Service balloon launching station on the property was torn down to prevent it from falling over the eroding cliff.

 “That’s how my time started,” Nye recalled last week. “It pretty much signified my entire time here.”

 Eventually, all of the buildings on the headquarters lot had to be demolished, including a 100-year-old former Coast Guard garage that had served as a dormitory for refuge interns for many years. The refuge has since leased a West Chatham house from the Chatham Conservation Foundation as office space.

 Much of Nye’s time was taken up with managing the retreat from the ongoing erosion, but the core duty continued to involve managing the hundreds of thousands of migratory birds who pass through Monomoy annually. The refuge regularly hosts 19,000 to 20,000 pairs of nesting terns, the largest colony on the east coast, along with other threatened and endangered species. With that number of birds, there are many issues to contend with, Nye said, including coordinating the interns and staff who monitor the colony in the summer and worrying about threats such as rats, gulls and other predators.

 Nye’s new position will be supervisor of the southern zone of the USFWS Northeast Region, which stretches from Virginia to Maine. He will be overseeing management of wildlife refuges in Virginia, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, working out of the Northeast Region headquarters in Hadley.

 “I’m part of the regional leadership team in this role,” he said.

 He said he’ll miss his Morris Island office, which had a direct view of the water. “That was pretty special,” he said. He called Monomoy “an amazing place.”

 “It’s an honor to have been the most recent steward” of the refuge, he said. 

 Two full-time staff members will remain after Nye’s departure. It’s customary for the agency not to begin the process of filling a position until there is a vacancy, Nye said, and the process — even during normal times — can take nine months or so. He added that over the Monomoy refuge’s history, there have been long stretches where there was no onsite manager.

 “There’s always somebody managing it,” he said, “they just may not be somebody here.”