LINDA KELSEY NAMED SERVICE'S SOUTHEAST

ASSISTANT REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR ECOLOGICAL SERVICES

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Regional Director Sam D. Hamilton has named Ms. Linda Kelsey, an 18-year Service veteran as Assistant Regional Director for Ecological Services for the Southeast region.

"Linda brings a wealth of ecological services experience to her new position," Hamilton said, noting that during her career she has served admirably in a number of key positions in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, including most recently that of special assistant to the Deputy Director where she became deeply involved in helping to execute the Service's management activities nationwide.

In her new position, Kelsey will be responsible for ensuring policy oversight for all Ecological Services programs in the Southeast that work to protect and restore healthy populations of fish and wildlife and the environments on which they depend. The work the Service conducts through these programs includes:

• assisting other agencies to plan projects, such as roads, flood control and navigation projects, tominimize harm to fish and wildlife and their habitats;
• helping to implement the Clean Water Act by providing assistance in designing projects to avoid loss of wetlands;
• ensuring that Federal power projects authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission consider fish and wildlife impacts so that their benefits to people are not lost;
• conducting a wide array of activities to conserve threatened and endangered plants, animals and their habitats;
• working with partners to prevent contamination and maintain healthy ecosystems; identifying contamination that adversely affects the health of fish, wildlife, and their ecosystems; and acting as Federal trustee for fish and wildlife injured by contamination, negotiating settlements from polluters to restore lost resources and their benefits to local citizens; and,
• providing landowners financial and technical assistance in restoring wetlands, prairies, woodlands, and other habitats. The program also guides restoration efforts on private lands and forges partnerships with other agencies and groups to help landowners with restoration projects.

Kelsey will direct all these activities and functions from 15 ecological services field offices in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition, as the Region's Geographic Assistant Regional Director for Area II, she will manage -- in accordance with the Service's ecosystem approach -- trust fish and wildlife resources on 34 National Wildlife Refuges and 5 National Fish Hatcheries in seven Southeastern states.

A native of Washington, D.C., Kelsey began her career there in 1980 with the Service's Endangered Species Program. She later spent 7 years in the Service's Annapolis Field Office where she was responsible for implementing a number of projects and field activities aimed at restoring the natural resources of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. After returning to Washington in 1992, Kelsey worked in the Ecological Service's Division of Habitat Conservation where she assisted in the implementation of the Service's Coastal Program, including the Coastal Barriers and Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grants programs. She later became Chief of the Branch of Habitat Restoration overseeing all the Service's coastal restoration activities as well as the Partners for Wildlife Program.

Kelsey received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and a Master's degree in marine and estuarine science from the University of Maryland. Her husband, Rob Kelsey, a native of Long Island, New York, is also a Service fish and wildlife biologist.

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Release #: R97-122

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