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
Mountain-Prairie Region
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Steve Guertin leads Service operations in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
He strongly believes in landscape scale conservation partnerships and serves as a member or Chairman on the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, Missouri River Basin Interagency Roundtable, and Upper Colorado River Recovery Implementation Committee, among several others.
He supports State conservation efforts by serving on the Service Regulations Committee to set the annual framework for migratory bird harvest; and works with the States on the Joint Federal/State ESA Task Force and the Joint Federal/State Policy Task Force to resolve Federal assistance and Endangered Species Act issues.
Under the America's Great Outdoors Initiative, and building on lessons learned in areas like Montana's Crown of the Continent, the Region has pursued landscape scale conservation by forging working landscape partnerships. This includes formally establishing the 2.0 million acre Dakota Grasslands Conservation Area; the 1.1 million acre Flint Hills Legacy Conservation area; doubling the size of the Rocky Mountain Front Conservation Area and the Blackfoot Valley Conservation Area, and creating the new Swan Valley Conservation Area.
As part of a national strategy, he is involved in standing up six Landscape Conservation Cooperatives that address wildlife adaptation in an environment of climate change, energy development, water challenges, fire and invasive species. In the Great Northern LCC, for example, he has partnered with the National Park Service and the Province of British Columbia to set transboundary conservation priorities at a landscape scale.
Before moving to Colorado in 2007, he led national level efforts to prepare, justify and execute the Service’s $2.3 billion annual budget, and completed operations assignments in several Service programs and the Alaska Region. During his nine year tenure in the Department of the Interior he recommended funding and policy options for the Service and the Bureau of Land Management. He previously served for eight years in the United States Marine Corps in Hawaii, California, Virginia, and overseas. 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 Harvard Kennedy School. Steve and his wife, Irene, live in Colorado and have two young children.
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 -- Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
