Most of us in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are probably familiar with the Teddy Roosevelt quote: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Statue of President Theodore Roosevelt at the entrance to Oyster Bay Hamlet, New York. Credit: USFWS

That saying has a lot in common with Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, in which he studies the common traits of companies that make and sustain the leap from good to great performance.

In the book, Collins urges companies to focus equally on what to do, what not to do and what to stop doing. He believes that most companies focus too much on what to do and ignore what not to do or what they should stop doing. What are you doing based on tradition? What assumptions or processes have you rested on because they were “good enough”?

We can probably all point to things we are doing simply because that’s how we have always done them. And if it worked for “Ding” Darling and Rachel Carson, who are we to change it?

Unfortunately, we can’t rest on our laurels. Our goal remains what it has always been—the conservation of our nation’s fish and wildlife heritage. But we must continue to change and improve how we do that.

Collins warns us in his book that “good is the enemy of great.” We cannot be satisfied with good work. We must always pursue excellence.

Especially now.

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I try not to repeat stories, at least not too often.

In 1998, at the first National Wildlife Refuge System refuge conference, in Keystone, Colorado, I told a story of my brothers, several friends, and I visiting Georgia's Blackbeard Island NWR while my father was working there. He and the manager dropped us all on the refuge's Atlantic beach and said, "We'll be back in a couple hours. Stay on the beach, and stay together." 

It was a magical day that lives still in my memory. We wandered, climbed trees, dug for treasure, poked at a decomposed dolphin carcass, and stayed together on the beach until they came to claim us. 

That message -- staying together -- was important in 1998. The Refuge System was unsettled and partners, including the National Audubon Society, were calling for a separate Refuge Service.

Thankfully, we stayed together.  And today we're all stronger for it.

I used that story again, this past weekend, in a keynote address to the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA).  We face enormous challenges, among them habitat fragmentation, water scarcity, species invasion and exotic diseases. These are made more challenging by a rapidly changing climate system, and a public increasingly disconnected from nature.

So, it's never been more important for us to "stay together" with our state colleagues -- our most important conservation partners.  Let's, all of us with the U.S. Fish and Wildllife Service, make a new fiscal year resolution. Let's challenge ourselves to reach out and be better colleagues, partners and friends with our state agency counterparts. We'll all be better for it!

I earned a graduate degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Washington in 1982, and I went back there this week to give the 2012 College of the Environment Annual Dean's Lecture.

What an honor!

I got to tell folks a little about some of the tremendous conservation work that people might not know we do.

For instance, did you know the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for more than 200 million acres of ocean in the Pacific? In fact, we manage more marine acreage than any other conservation organization in the world.

An underwater shot of a reef at Tern Island in the Hawaiian Island National Wildlife Refuge. Credit: Sarah Youngern/USFWS

I then got to my main topic -- “Wildlife in the Modern American Landscape.” Where do you see wildlife in the modern American landscape?

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