On December 3, President Obama formally nominated Dan Ashe to be the next Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Currently serving as Deputy Director, Ashe has been the science advisor to the Director, Chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System and Assistant Director for External Affairs.

"As a senior manager with the Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 15 years, Dan Ashe has experience leading many of the agency's programs, including the National Wildlife Refuge System and the migratory bird program," Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said. "He is an outstanding choice to ensure the Service's programs are both innovative and science-driven as we face the challenges of managing our fish and wildlife resources in the 21^st century."

Ashe helped to craft the strategy that will guide the Service's efforts to deal with the effects of a changing climate. That plan outlined interagency cooperative efforts across landscapes as the most effective way to help fish and wildlife populations adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions.

"The challenge for resource scientists and managers will be in developing better capacities to model and predict these changes so that we can develop conservation strategies that are timely and effective," Ashe stated in testimony before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans in 2008. "Like the fish and wildlife populations that the Service is entrusted to conserve, we must adapt our work in an era of changing climate. This will require increasing ability to predict changes and design conservation strategies at landscape scales, to implement conservation projects, and to learn by adapting based on observed results."

Since that time, Ashe has been a leader in the development of the agency's Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs), which are intended to leverage resources and strategically target science to inform conservation decisions and actions.

Ashe worked on Capitol Hill as a member of the professional staff of the former Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries in the U.S. House of Representatives before joining the Service in 1995. He has a Bachelor of Science in biological sciences from the Florida State University and a graduate degree in marine affairs from the University of Washington.(jas)