Maurice Broun

Hawk Mountain Sancturary

In 1934, the wealthy socialite, bird-watching enthusiast, and conservationist Rosalie Edge leased with an option to buy to establish Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and hired Maurice and Irma Broun as game wardens to exclude hunters. The land, located near Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, was purchased.

With the exception of three years from 1942 to 1945, when he was a photographer with the Seabees in the South Pacific during World War II, Broun worked as a curator of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary from 1934 until his retirement in 1966. Maurice and Irma worked as a husband and wife team at the Sanctuary until 1966, and then moved to a farm one ridge to the west of Hawk Mountain in East Brunswick Township, Pennsylvania.

Death Broun died of cancer on October 2, 1979, at Lehigh Valley Hospital–Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pennsylvania.