Local wildlife biologist featured in podcast series

STRONG – The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has expanded its horizons past the boundless woodlands of Maine and onto the world wide web.

Robert Cordes is a wildlife biologist in the department. He spends his days collecting data, managing habitats and working on development projects, along with a million other things.

“There’s no typical day to day. We like to say it’s ‘moose to mayflies’ because of how much ground we cover,” Cordes explained. But one task has remained a constant for Cordes: writing and recording podcasts for a wildlife-themed series.

The series, titled Got Nature? is a project that Cordes and an old colleague came up with together. Most of the podcasts are based out of Indiana at Purdue University where Cordes’ colleague lives, but more recently Cordes has begun recording podcasts about issues happening right here in Maine; and the hope is for that to expand.

“We want to build a fan base to support having our own podcast right here in Maine,” Cordes said. Cordes enjoys all aspects of the process; everything from deciding on a topic, to writing the script, to recording.

“I tend to come up with topics based on the questions that I get a lot of calls about. We want this information to be useful to everyone,” he said. For example, Cordes wrote a show titled What’s Digging up My Yard? which explored the rampant number of skunks that year and what landowners could do to prevent the problem.

Cordes’ interest in wildlife began from a young age. “I always enjoyed hunting and fishing. When I realized I wasn’t going to make money playing football I went and talked to a local biologist. Everything fell into place from there.”

Cordes grew up in upstate New York. A job took him to the Washington D.C. area and from there he applied and got a job working for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

“In D.C. you really have to listen to the traffic report every morning. I’ll never forget one of my first mornings on the job up here. I was making the rounds, driving the back roads and turned the radio on. The guy on the radio said he had the traffic report for the day ‘Route 201 is clear all the way from Skowhegan to Jackman,’ he said. I had to pull over because I was laughing so hard,” Cordes recalled, laughing again as he talked.

For listeners interested in learning more, you can find the entire ‘Got Nature?’ series at https://ag.purdue.edu/agcomm/Pages/NewsGNarchive.aspx You can also send Robert Cordes an email for topic suggestions at robert.cordes@maine.gov.