The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Reclamation are pleased to announce that Kevin Johnson has been selected as Coordinator for the Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative. Kevin will provide ongoing facilitation and operational leadership to the Southern Rockies LCC, consistent with the goals, objectives, and guidance of the LCC Steering Committee. He will begin his new position on Oct. 23, 2011.
The Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative is part of a national network of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives that were established by the Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in Secretarial Order 3289. They are self-directed partnerships among federal, state, tribal, and private organizations and agencies within a geographic area. LCCs leverage resources to define a common vision for sustaining natural resources and design coordinated action in support of the highest conservation priorities across large connected areas, or landscapes.
The Southern Rockies LCC encompasses large portions of 4 states: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, as well as smaller parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada. The area is geographically complex, including wide elevation and topographic variation; from 14,000 foot peaks to the Grand Canyon and cold desert basins. This region includes the headwaters of the Colorado River and Rio Grande, the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains to the west, and the Southern Rocky Mountains to the east, separated by the rugged tableland of the Colorado Plateau.
Johnson has served over the past-year on detail as the interim co-coordinator for the SRLCC with Avra Morgan of the Bureau of Reclamation. He has over 20 years professional experience working on cross-disciplinary resource management issues across the West, including refuge and public lands management, endangered species recovery, conservation planning assistance, and environmental contaminants. Johnson comes to this position with a robust background in the application of the Strategic Habitat Conservation framework, a commitment to forge a strong and effective partnership of conservation practitioners, and to the development of scientific capacity to support realization of shared conservation objectives.
He holds both Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Fish and Wildlife Management from Montana State University.
Source: Bureau of Reclamation
