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Michael: Hello, I'm Michael Gale with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and I'm joined here today
in the studio with Dan Ashe, the deputy director for policy for the Service and also President
Obama's nominee to be the Director. Dan, thank you so much for joining us and thank
you for all of your leadership in the Service and for the support of the Conserving the
Future
vision process so thank you and welcome. Dan: Great to be here.
Now Dan, you were intimately involved in sort've the last time we did this for the Refuge
System. you know there is was
great effort in the late nineties to craft a vision for the Refuge System on the heels
of the Refuge Improvement Act. Why is now the time to craft a renewed vision and has much
changed in the past ten years or so?
Well, there's a lot has changed in the last ten years Michael. i think given the
things that we're learning about
the world, the changing demographics of the world as a whole and within
the U.S., that not just the number of people in the country but
changing ethnic and cultural
diversity within the country. The great challenges that we're dealing with with water
allocation and climate change and
invasive species, water scarcity
I think that we, right now is a great time to look at the vision,
our vision for the National Wildlife Refuge System.
For folks outside of the Refuge System program in the Fish and Wildlife Service who
are very much encouraged to be part of this vision process,
why is this important for them? What we really need think about is
not Refuges as
as points on a map
or even as a confederation of
places that we manage, but
as a a system of lands that's designed to help us accomplish something and
so as we think about where all employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and so we're all responsible for the mission of the organization and so the
opportunity to really get engaged in
thinking about the future of the Refuge System and helping the organization
design the future for the National
Wildlife Refuge System is really an incredible opportunity to do something positive for
conservation. There are folks that we depend on greatly and our
partners. Can you talk about what their role is in the vision process and why it's important
for them to engage?
I think we've seen certainly over the last, well the the the entire history of the
National Wildlife Refuge System,
but certainly over the last few decades how important partners are for us and we've seen
the growth of the
Friends movement within the Refuge System and the importance of strong
Friends groups
in protecting and helping us to manage
and can get the resources that we need to do our job.
The the degree to which we're involved with our state partners in management
both
joint management of state wildlife management areas but also joint
management of the wildlife that cross refuge boundaries and
and that we're jointly accountable for.
So working with our partners is essential to a vision for the Refuge System in
the future and so
having the opportunity to get our partners engaged and really help us to define that vision
is very important.
If you had a message to give to the next generation based on your experience and in your
career or sort of your vision for the future
what would that message be for the next generation?
The message is really one
of dealing with challenge that and I think that
the Service has always been an organization that has
stepped up to deal with challenge whether
it was
the the dust bowl,
pesticides and contaminates
in the nineteen fifties and sixties,
the dramatic loss of wetlands in that nineteen seventies and eighties, species endangerment.
Now we have
climate
change,
invasive species, wildlife disease, these new emerging challenges that
we need to be able to deal with so
coming into the organization now, I think it's a great opportunity to
get engaged in these things
and visioning process for the Refuge System is that chance for that
new generation of Fish and Wildlife Service employees to come in and say
and have a voice and really say, well here's what I think
the Refuge System can be. Here is how i think the Refuge System can help
deal with these great challenges that we are going to be facing because it's going
to be their organization.
Well Dan, thank you so much for the time that you spent here and before I let you go I was wondering
if I could ask you,
you know it's nice to get a sense of of who our leadership are and terms of you
know what you do maybe outside an office. I have a family. I try to find time
to spend with my family. I put a premium on that.
We like to be outdoors, I'm a water fowl hunter during water fowl
season. I'd like to do that although it's increasingly difficult to find the time. My father
worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service and so
I grew up around the Fish and Wildlife Service and
during the
summers when I was a young kid we would follow my father around. He worked
at that time in the Atlanta regional office. He was a realty specialist and so
he did most of the acquisition work. at great refuges like
Key Deer,
Ding Darling, Merritt Island, Okefenokee,
Yazoo, and so
we would travel with him during the summertime to those places, that's pretty much
what we did for vacation and so it was just that opportunity to really be in the outdoors, to
kind of understand the importance of conserving and managing great places like that. I think everybody
in the organization is busy
but I think it's important for people in this profession to have a chance
and
look for ways to be engaged in their local communities.
You have opportunity to get into the outdoors as well.
Well thank you Dan so much again for everything you do. Thank you.
Thank you very much Michael.