Karen McElmurry
Executive Director

Karen is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator with 24 years of experience. Karen grew up in Michigan, and always had a passion for helping animals. She worked at the Michigan Humane Society, first with the dogs and cats, then moved to the wildlife wing in 1984… and has not stopped working with wildlife since.

In 1986 she interned at the Treehouse Wildlife Center in Brighton, Illinois, then headed to the renowned Owl Foundation in Ontario, Canada for another internship. The famous Kay McKeever inspired in Karen an undying passion for owls, which is still evident to anyone who sees Karen with CFW barred owl Bianca on her arm. She then moved to New Hampshire and became the weekend wildlife coordinator for the New England Wildlife Center in Hingham, MA - an overwhelming but very educational job. After spending two years gaining valuable experience there, she moved to Maine and began her career at the Center for Wildlife, which was then only a couple years old, and was housed in a trailer with no running water.

Karen has been at the Center ever since, and her vision of wildlife rehabilitation is the guiding force behind the Center’s work. With her dreams and determination, and a lot of help, she led the Center to plumbing (which revolutionized the cleaning of poopy cages); a building, plus several expansions and renovations; the capacity for our current intake level of 1500 animals a year; a wide array of educational programs; and – most recently – a beautiful new enclosure for our non-releasable raptors.

In 2000, Karen was named “Maine Rehabilitator of the Year” by Re-Maine Wild, and she is frequently asked to be a presenter at state and regional conferences on wildlife rehabilitation. She lives in Cape Neddick with her dogs, goats, chickens, bunnies, a snake… and an infinitely patient family of Mike, Laurel, and Dillon, all of whom help to make CFW the success it is by generously sharing their wife and mom, not to mention being constantly co-opted into CFW projects.

Laura Dehler
Development Director

Laura Dehler has more than 25 years of project management experience in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors.  A native of Vermont, Laura graduated from Dartmouth College, then served as project administrator for several internationally-sponsored research projects at Harvard University in both the School of Public Health and the Institute for International Development. From 1994 to 2003, she worked at the State Street Corporation in Boston, trying out positions in every area she could think of, including government relations, policy research, executive communications, marketing, and product development. In 2003, she traded in her Boston commute for a drive just down the road to the Center for Wildlife, where she was finally able to realize her life-long dream of working with animals.

She started as an animal care volunteer, but could not quell her tendency to fill every empty niche she encountered… and the Center had a lot of them! This led her to a Volunteer Coordinator position in 2004, and in 2005 they started calling her the Development Director, which is really just a concise way of saying “woman of all work.” Laura is responsible for fundraising and finances.

Among her many projects at the CFW, she established the annual “Call of the Wild” fundraising and outreach breakfast. For her birthday in 2006, the staff cleared a space between the turtles for Laura to have an office at the Center, so she would no longer have an excuse to go home. Fortunately, she lives just down the road in Cape Neddick with her husband Frank and their incredibly pampered cats.

Lorisa Ricketts
Intensive Care Director

Lorisa Ricketts was always doing something with animals as a child, whether it was playing with salamanders and spiders she found, or making playground equipment for the chipmunks in her yard. When at age 10 she realized that she was getting too tall to be a jockey, Lorisa decided to become a biologist. Eight years later, she went to University of Wisconsin-Madison to do just that, and earned her BS in Zoology and Environmental Studies, taking a little time to learn ballroom dance along the way.

She fell in love with birds while studying ornithology and volunteered as a chick parent at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, WI, where she spent a good deal of time running and flapping her arms to encourage the chicks to exercise their wings. She planned to continue her work at ICF after graduation but fate intervened when she met her husband-to-be, an Englishman named Pete, and she surprised her friends and family by moving to Britain to marry him.

For six years, they lived in northern England where Lorisa worked for a non-profit agency as an environmental consultant to businesses in the largest industrial park in Europe. But her heart was with the wildlife and in 2003 she and Pete moved back to the U.S. and settled in Maine. After a bird hit her window later that year, Lorisa discovered the Center for Wildlife. She began volunteering at the Center that summer, fostered her first baby squirrels the following spring, and was offered a paid position soon after.

In December 2004 she and Pete moved with their two British housecats, two mice, and their dove to a haunted farmhouse on 10 acres. Lorisa promptly took over the basement as her rehabilitation space and is currently working on turning the backyard into a haven for “the beasts”.

Amy Titcomb
Operations Director

Amy Titcomb grew up in New Hampshire, and has adored animals her entire life. Since she didn’t want to be a vet or zookeeper, she was always told that there weren’t any professional fields where she could work with animals. Luckily, she knew free advice is worth what you pay for it, so she ignored these nay-sayers, and kept searching. In 2002, she went to South Africa on a whim and it was there she stumbled across wildlife rehabilitation, in the form of raising orphaned baboons. She got totally hooked when she volunteered at the CARE baboon center.

After a brief stint back in the US, she returned to South Africa a year later to help release a baboon troop (a 3-month process), and she went on to work at other African wildlife centers, primarily with penguins and other seabirds. From this experience, she learned that wildlife rehabilitation is fun and rewarding, college degrees don’t matter in the field, and wildlife rehabbers tend to be as crazy as she is. So, after wrapping up her Bowdoin College career in 2004 with a major in African Studies, she leapt back into wildlife rehab with an internship at the Center for Wildlife, and was offered a paid position at the end of the summer.

After heading to Tanzania for 6 months studying wildlife and ecology, she returned to the Center in June 2005, just in time for baby bird season. The following Spring, she was thrilled to accept a full-time position as a Rehabilitation Supervisor, and she has more recently joined the education team. Love of the Center has inspired Amy to stick around for a change, and she currently lives in the woods of Alfred with a perfect dog named Wattson and a boyfriend Fred who’s pretty nice too… both have learned to tolerate a house-full of orphaned baby mammals all Spring and Fall.

Kristen Lamb
Education and Outreach Director

Kristen Lamb grew up playing in the woods of Dracut, MA, until she accidentally strayed out of the forest and into business school. However, it didn’t take long for Kristen to realize that the indoor life was not for her, and she found her way to the Wildlife Management Department at UNH for a second college try. Kristen immediately knew she had found her calling: she adored her classes, and she earned additional credits for research projects.

Her favorite project was the radio-tracking of moose in the White Mountains, where she was lucky enough to creep up on a mother and her calf. During her second year at UNH, Kristen began volunteering at CFW. On her first day, she got a baptism by fire when a staff member put her in a small room with a bald eagle and asked her to force-feed it; Kristen was relieved to discover this was only a joke, but she was also totally hooked.

A couple months later, a position opened up, and Kristen gladly joined the CFW staff, ready for eagles or anything else. She learned a lot about rehabilitation, and also began doing educational programs with the Center’s permanent animals. In the summer of 2006, she took a hiatus from the CFW to work as a Park Interpreter at the Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island. This sparked an already growing interest in environmental education. In the late fall, she returned to the Center full-time, armed with her experience from Plum Island and unstoppable determination, and has taken on the development of CFW’s education programs: designing, enhancing, and presenting education programs both new and old.

Her goal is to help counteract the human-caused impact on wildlife through a combination of both rehabilitation and education. She lives in Nottingham NH with Ed and a beautiful (if slightly mischievous) cat named Tiny Dancer.
Amy Pierce
Rehabilitation Supervisor

Amy Pierce has always been attracted to the natural world. Loving being outside, Amy grew up spending the summers with her family on Mousam Lake, just a ten minute drive from their home in Shapleigh, Maine. She remembers playing barefoot, getting lost with her dog in the back woods, catching frogs, keeping a turtle journal, and swimming in the lake she loves so much.

Pursuing her passion, Amy starting volunteering at Center for Wildlife in 2004. She interned at the center for a year and just recently jumped aboard our rehab team in summer 2009. Amy graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2009 with a Wildlife Biology degree.

While attending college she traveled to New Zealand with a program called EcoQuest, where she spent a semester with a group of 25 students from the US learning about ecological restoration and working on the Maguatartri Ecological Island Project (an enormous predator proof fencing system). While in New Zealand Amy received an email explaining that the staff at the center really wanted her to join the team when she returned back to the States. Amy gladly accepted this amazing opportunity that was open at the center, since it was the only place she really could see herself working.

Amy is currently living where she grew up in Shapleigh with her parents Barry and Karen. They have a beautiful dog Chloe and a very handsome cat named Lucky.
Center for Wildlife Board of Directors

Board Chairman:
Steven Corrigan, Wells, Maine

Board Treasurer
Karyn Scharf Morin, S.Berwick, Maine

Secretary:
Mike Cannon, S.Berwick, Maine

Other Voting Members:

Dawn Dickinson, Rochester, NH
Joe Tucker, Rye, NH
Sarah Wilkinson, Ogunquit, Maine

Center for Wildlife Advisory Committee

Non-Voting Members:

Patty Cherry, Kittery Point, Maine
Michael Goslin, Cape Neddick, Maine
Mike Herlihy, S.Berwick, Maine
Sally Herlihy, S.Berwick, Maine
Hans, Hug Jr., Exeter, NH
Michael Robinson, Buxton, Maine
Neil Rolde, York, Maine
Glenn Shwaery, Rye, NH
Lee Sullivan, Eliot, Maine
Marge Titcomb, Yarmouth, Maine


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