Rowan W. Gould

Rowan Gould has served as Deputy Director of Operations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since 2008. In this capacity, he oversees the agency’s regional directors, ensures agency performance and accountability and consistent application of all Service resource management policies, and is responsible for day-to-day Service operations as the agency implements its field-based conservation mission.

Gould served as the Acting Director of the Service during the transition to the Obama Administration in 2009, and again after the passing of Director Sam Hamilton, beginning in February, 2010 through June, 2011. As Acting Director, Gould worked to promote the agency’s mission and priorities throughout the United States and abroad by developing and strengthening partnerships with other Federal agencies and foreign governments, States, Tribes, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.

Gould also represented the Department of Interior as the senior DOI liaison to the Incident Command responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Houma, Louisiana in 2010.

Gould’s extensive leadership experience also includes terms as Assistant Director for Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration, Regional Director of the Alaska Region, Deputy Assistant Director for Fisheries in Washington, D.C., and Deputy Regional Director for the Service’s Pacific Region.

In 1989, while Gould was Assistant Regional Director for Ecological Services and Fisheries in Alaska, he was responsible for coordinating the Service’s activities in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill and served as the Department of Interior’s representative to the inter-governmental oil spill damage assessment management team.  After that, he served as the Assistant Regional Director for Refuges and Wildlife in Alaska, where his responsibilities included the oversight of the 77-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System and the Migratory Bird program.

Gould began his Service career in 1976 as a research microbiologist at the Seattle National Research Center.  He has served in numerous research positions including section chief at the National Fisheries Research Center in Seattle, Washington and Director of the National Fisheries Research and Development Laboratory, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. Gould is a native of Oregon and received his B.A., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in fish health and fish biology from Oregon State University.

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