Owen holds a Bachelors in Chemistry & PhD in Material Science.

He formerly was a professor of Chemistry/Physics for 23 years and founder/president of the local Audubon Society. He helped found our educational nonprofit in 1985, and soon became a valuable leader thanks to his teaching experience.

Here he is seen standing on an old beaver dam located on the Brown’s 300-acre wildlife sanctuary called “Wildsprite”. That is poplar at his feet just waiting for beavers to arrive.

Both Owen and Sharon love kayaking and canoeing on the rivers and lakes of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. They have a very light (26 lb./11.8Kg) carbon fiber “Hornbeck” canoe that they can easily carry into back country wetlands and over dams to assess conflicts at beaver wetlands.

Sharon has a Masters Degree in Biology. Previously, she was the supervising technologist at a large cancer institute’s hematology laboratory, and taught Biology courses full-time at the college level.

Her articles and photos, including some of Dorothy Richards, have appeared in national magazines. Since helping to found BWW in 1985, she has focused on the beaver and ways to coexist with this important keystone species. She researches and writes articles for “Beaversprite”, and is the editor of that tri-annual.

As a licensed wildlife rehabilitator for 20 years, she raised orphaned kits and aided injured beavers. Here she is swimming with one of four beaver orphans that were initially kept indoors before being taken to a farm pond on the sanctuary for exercise. At first, she entered the water with the kits as it was thought that the switch from a bathtub to a big pond had made them anxious. Later, a large snapping turtle was discovered at the pond and relocated.