The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe announced the appointment of Noreen Walsh as the new regional director for the Mountain-Prairie Region, which includes Montana.
Walsh, a 22-year veteran of FWS, has served as deputy director for the region since December 2008.
“I’m extremely pleased that Noreen Walsh has accepted the regional director position,” Ashe said in a statement. “She has proven herself as an accomplished and effective leader who will continue to be a tremendous asset to the service. I look forward to having her on our leadership team to accomplish great things for the agency.”
As regional director, Walsh will oversee FWS activities for eight states in the region, including Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. It is one of the largest geographic jurisdictions. She will lead more than 1,000 employees across the region, from the office in Lakewood, Colo., to the Bozeman Fish Technology Center to the Flint Hills National Wildlife Refuge in Kansas.
A news release from FWS described Walsh’s duties, which will include overseeing the protection and conservation of some of the last habitat for native species in the region such as grizzly bears, wolves, sage grouse, ferrets and millions of migratory birds who journey through and breed in the Prairie Pothole landscape every year.
As deputy regional director, Walsh served as the chief operating officer for the Mountain-Prairie Region, working to conserve fish, wildlife and habitat. She coordinated activities of the region’s senior leadership team to pursue priority resource conservation goals in conjunction with state, federal and non-governmental partners. She leads the service’s role in a west-wide conservation initiative focused on greater sage-grouse and its sagebrush habitat, and has supported the “working landscape” conservation model under the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.
Walsh holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology from Michigan State University and a Master’s degree in Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University.
For more information about the Mountain-Prairie Region, click here.