Ken Stansell
Deputy Director
Ken Stansell is the career Deputy Director for the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service). He was selected in March 2007, after serving as the Acting Deputy Director since February 2006. As the agency’s Deputy Director, Stansell is responsible for ensuring the Service’s mission of working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.
The Service achieves its mission through management of more that 95 million acres of lands on 548 National Wildlife Refuges in all 50 States; operation of 69 National Fish Hatcheries; and administration of fish and wildlife programs, including endangered species recovery, from its 64 Fishery Resources Offices and 81 Ecological Services Field Offices nationwide.
As Deputy Director, Stansell works 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. Stansell assists the Director in ensuring agency performance and accountability, customer service, and consistent application of all Service resource management policies; and is responsible for the day to day operations of the Service in implementing its field based mission. In the Director’s absence, the Deputy Director assumes those responsibilities on an acting basis.
Stansell began his career in 1974 as a research biologist with the South Carolina Wildlife and Marine Resources Department, where he established one of the first State endangered species conservation programs, in response to the newly enacted Endangered Species Act. He joined the Service in 1979, working in both the Federal Aid and Endangered Species programs in the Southeast Region. In 1987 he was selected for the Departmental Manager Training Program and transferred to Washington, D.C, where he held a series of management positions in both the Endangered Species and Ecological Services Programs. In 1990, Stansell began working in the international arena, administering the newly created African Elephant Conservation Act. In International Affairs, Stansell was promoted to Chief of the Division of Management Authority, and then to Deputy Assistant Director.Last updated: November 16, 2007