Staff Bios & Contact Information
The range of the greater sage-grouse stretches across 11 western states and three administrative regions within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In order to best serve the many stakeholders who are interested in the conservation of the sage-grouse and the sagebrush grasslands where they live, the Service has created this web site and a team of Public Affairs Specialists to respond to inquiries from the media and the public.
Jennifer Strickland
Public Affairs Officer
Mountain Prairie - Region 6
States: Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming
303-236-45874
jennifer_strickland@fws.gov
As the daughter of two biologists, Jennifer grew up with a natural interest in biological science and the art of scientific communication. After graduating from the University of Georgia with an ABJ in Advertising, Jennifer began her career in the Southeast Region’s Office of External Affairs in June 2009 as the first New Media Specialist in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There she helped to establish the agency’s existing social media infrastructure, best practices, and conducted bi-annual training at the National Conservation Training Center. She was deployed twice to provide social media and video expertise during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and has served on numerous teams addressing agency priorities such as proactive species conservation, private land partnerships and building the agency’s brand identity. Jennifer began serving as the public affairs specialist in the Mountain-Prairie region focused on sagebrush conservation in October 2016.
Amanda Smith
Public Affairs Officer
Pacific Northwest - Region 1
States: Idaho, Oregon, and Washington
503-872-2852
amanda_smith@fws.gov
Dan Hottle
Public Affairs Officer
Pacific Southwest - Region 8
States: California and Nevada
775-861-6336
daniel_hottle@fws.gov
Dan joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Nevada Field Office from the National Park Service, where he was a public affairs officer for Yellowstone National Park since 2011. Prior to that, as a documentary filmmaker he owned and managed a private, Midwest-based digital video and multimedia production company and was Communications Director for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Dan is also a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served for nearly two decades as a combat journalist, photographer and media relations specialist. He was among the very first Marine troops to be called into combat duty in Afghanistan immediately following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, where he delivered to living rooms all over the globe the first news of America’s War on Terror from the front lines.
Dan holds a bachelor’s in Public Affairs from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a master’s in Telecommunications from Ball State University, and has more than 25 years of unique and diverse worldwide communications experience on both sides of a camera. “After combat I struck out across America’s public lands with a small tent and sleeping bag to reflect, recharge and reconnect with our country and its citizens for whom I had been fighting. It was an honor protecting and defending the United States as a Marine. Now it’s an equal honor protecting and defending the beauty and livelihood of the wilds with which we share it.”
