From an announcement . this is excerpted.
As you know, USDA announced a reorganization on May 11, 2017. In accordance with a directive in the 2014 Farm Bill, we created a new Under Secretary of Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs as part of a realignment of several mission areas. The reorganization also included a reconstituted mission area reporting to a newly-named Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation. The U.S. Forest Service, given its size and importance, will be the only agency to report to the Under Secretary for National Resources and Environment. For these three mission areas, we have named Acting Deputy Under Secretaries, who will serve in their roles until the Senate confirms permanent presidentially-nominated appointees.
Natural Resources and Environment
Dan Jiron will fill the role of Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment. With more than 29 years of public service and natural resources management, Jiron was appointed Associate Chief of the Forest Service in July 2016. Prior to this appointment, Jiron served in many leadership positions, including Regional Forester of the Rocky Mountain Region; Deputy Regional Forester in the Pacific Southwest Region; Forest Supervisor of the Santa Fe National Forest; District Ranger on the Salt Lake Ranger District of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest; District Ranger on the South Park Ranger District of the Pike and San Isabel National Forest, Comanche, and Cimarron National Grasslands; Director of Communications and Legislative Affairs of the Intermountain Region, National Press Officer in Washington, D.C.; and aide to United States Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado. Jiron earned a bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University and a Master’s degree from Regis University of Denver.
Under the reorganization plan, the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment will retain supervision of the U.S. Forest Service.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with USDA bureaucracy, there is one Secretary and Undersecretaries who are right below him. A Deputy Undersecretary works for the Undersecretary.( In the Obama administration, there were two Deputy Undersecretaries, at first Harris Sherman and Robert Bonnie, and Harris Sherman moved on and was replaced by Butch Blazer.) Parentheses indicate that this information may not be correct and I welcome corrections.
Perhaps with the reorganization, they will only need one Deputy Undersecretary?
FWIW, as far as I’m concerned, Dan is a great choice for this job.
Yes, a correction is needed. There is one UnderSecretary for the USDA’s Natural Resource and Environment Division with two Deputy UnderSecretaries. Both Harris and Robert were UnderSecretaries, Harris before Robert. The most recent Deputy UnderSecretaries were Butch Blazer (overseeing the Forest Service) and Ann Mills (overseeing the Natural Resource Conservation Service).
Thanks Tony… I kind of had a bad feeling about my post retirement knowledge, and it was hard to locate that information online.
Hi Sharon, yes I heartily agree. Dan will be a rare under-secretary NRE without an outside political agenda and very committed to the Forest Service, in my view. Yet he’s worked enough in DC with Congress/ USDA/ news media/ externals to be effective with many pressures and interests. An insider with external sensitivity. I have worked with Dan and for him; have a lot of respect for his intelligence, sensitivity, wit, ethics.
Cindy, it says that he is Acting which means (usually) he will be replaced with a political appointee. But sometimes they are not, e.g. Dr. Ann Bartuska who has been Acting Undersecretary in REE, since, I think before I retired(five years ago). It will be interesting to see..
It is September 1st, 2018 and the official USFS page for “Leadership Biographies” still features Dan Jiron as the Associate Chief. Would you please update? It’s been 18 months now…
https://www.fs.fed.us/about-agency/newsroom/leadership-biographies
Would love to see Lenise Lago’s picture as Acting Associate Chief (202) 205-1779
Thank you.
Gwendolyn, thanks for this. I will start a tab up top for Forest Service websites that need updating and broken links. Hopefully we can help the FS by crowdsourcing the ID of these places.