Mike Kersula, Regional Stewardship Manager
Mike Kersula is the Regional Stewardship Manager for the region from Belfast to Stonington.
For Mike, joining the Maine Coast Heritage Trust team as a steward feels like a lucky convergence of work related to his past experiences, including work in island carpentry, marine science, tree pruning, fisheries, and managing business operations. He is excited to work to care for and support the local communities where he works, including everyone and every being from the fucoid algae to the neighbors and the summer visitors (birds and people, too).
He is the father of a toddler who loves monster trucks and dinosaurs and the husband of an incredible artist, and together they are the lights of his life. They spend their free time together taking walks, playing with Legos, and dancing. Mike loves to garden and has many veggies, fruit trees, and a small oyster farm that he tends.
On conservation: “I think conservation is never simple. On the face of it, we may think there are easy choices to be made to protect specific places or ecological communities. I am excited to work for an organization that takes into account the full breadth of the complexity involved in conservation work. I have been impressed with the mindfulness for stakeholder engagement, community needs, and also consideration of the connections (whether current or future) between the wildlife, ecological, and human communities on islands and lands across archipelagoes and peninsulas. I am a big fan of Maine Coast Heritage Trust’s approach that does the hard work of acknowledging, accounting for, and adapting for the complexity.”
On the job: Mike’s work focuses on stewardship of MCHT’s mainland and island preserves from Belfast up to Frankfort and down to Stonington and Merchants Row. In addition, he leads the writing of management plans for the area from Belfast to Gouldsboro, including the islands. This may mean one day he’s wielding a weed whacker on Saddleback island and the next collaborating with the stewardship team on a 10-year plan for Schoodic Forest.