About US
Mission Statement:
The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish and wildlife and their habitat for the continuing benefit of the American people.
Steve Guertin - Regional Director
Steve Guertin is the Regional Director for the 8-state Mountain-Prairie Region. Before this assignment, he led national level efforts to prepare, justify and execute the Service’s $2.3 billion annual budget, including constant interactions with senior agency and Departmental leadership, OMB staff and Congressional appropriations staffs. During his nine year tenure in the Department of the Interior Office of Budget he recommended funding and policy options for the Service and the Bureau of Land Management. He earned a bachelors degree from Norwich University in Vermont and a Master’s of Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh; and was a Senior Executive Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Before joining the Department of the Interior, he served for eight years in the United States Marine Corps in Hawaii, California, Virginia, and overseas.
Noreen Walsh - Deputy Regional Director
Before becoming the Deputy Regional Director for the Mountain-Prairie Region in December 2008, Noreen Walsh, an 18-year veteran of the Service, most recently served as the Assistant Regional Director of Ecological Services in the agency’s Southeast Region headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to that, Walsh served in the Endangered Species Program in the Washington D.C. headquarters. She also worked in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ecological Services Field Office and spent the first five years of her Service career as a research biologist in Alaska.
Walsh holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology from Michigan State University and a Master of Science degree in Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University. She and her husband, Mark, have two daughters, Claire and Leah. They enjoy traveling, hiking, camping, and reading.
Why "Mountain-Prairie"?
This U.S. Fish and Wildlife Region's nickname aptly describes the two most prominent physical features of the eight-state area. The eastern portion is comprised of the Great Plains, primarily the short-grass prairies. To the west rise the Rocky Mountains, and parts of the inter-mountain west beyond the Continental Divide.
The climate over much of the region is semi-arid to arid. Hence existing surface waters are all the more vital to wildlife. In the northeastern portion of the Region, in eastern Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, is a physiographic area known as the Prairie Coteau, a land marked by small ponds and wetlands. Left by the last glacier, these "prairie potholes" are among the most important nesting habitat for waterfowl in North America.
The Regional Office, in Denver, administers federal fish and wildlife conservation activities in the eight states, through three "eco-regions" -- North and South Dakota; Montana and Wyoming; and Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.
