Wendi Weber says she has returned to her roots in the Northeast. She comes to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Northeast Regional office in Hadley, Mass., from Minneapolis, Minn., but she was born in upstate New York and went to school in Rhode Island.
Weber is the new deputy regional director for the Services Northeast Region, the second in command of a natural resource agency charged with conserving fish and wildlife in a 13-state region ranging from Maine to Virginia.
"I am honored to have this opportunity to work with the wonderful people of the Northeast to conserve the tremendous natural resources of the region," Weber said.
In Minneapolis, Weber was assistant regional director for ecological services. She managed that regions programs for endangered species, national wetlands inventory, environmental contaminants, natural resource damage assessment, coastal conservation, and review of federal projects.
Webers previous job was chief of endangered species in the Services Northwest Region based in Portland, Ore. She also worked for the Services endangered species and international affairs programs in Washington, D.C., for three years.
Prior to working for the Service, Weber worked as a field biologist for the states of Florida and Georgia.
"Wendis experience, working in the Southeast, Northwest and upper Midwest in a broad range of fields, provides the background we need for natural resource management in our diverse region," says Marvin E. Moriarty, regional director for the Service in the Northeast. "We value her commitment to scientific excellence and her commonsense approach to making decisions."
A native of Rochester, N.Y., Weber earned a bachelors degree in zoology at the University of Rhode and a masters degree in fisheries from the University of Georgia.
Weber, her husband Jon, and her two young sons, Bailey and Clay, will live in Amherst, Mass.
The Northeast region has some 900 employees, about 200 based in Hadley and the remainder in nearly 100 field offices, national fish hatcheries and national wildlife refuges throughout 13 states. For more information, see http://www.fws.gov/northeast.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 95-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System, which encompasses 545 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 69 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resources offices and 81 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign and Native American tribal governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Assistance program, which distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies.
