Humboldt State University Alumnus Lyle Laverty ('65) has been nominated by President George W. Bush to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.
The nomination is subject to United States Senate confirmation.
In that post, Mr. Laverty would oversee policy for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, with a combined annual budget of some $3.6 billion and a combined workforce of about 30,000 employees.
Mr. Laverty has been the Director of Colorado State Parks since 2001 and during his tenure he opened two new state parks and began planning for two more. He also helped establish the Front Range Trail, a 700-mile pathway extending through Colorado from Wyoming to New Mexico.
In a press release, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne praised the nominee as "an outstanding leader with a lifetime of experience in managing parks and forests and overseeing the stewardship of wildlife."
After graduating from Humboldt State in June, 1965 with a bachelor's of science degree in Forest Management, Mr. Lavery went to work for the U.S. Forest Service, where he ascended through the ranks, serving first as a Forest Supervisor at Mendocino National Forest.
By 2000, he was a Regional Forester responsible for the management and stewardship of more than 24 million acres of forests and grasslands in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska. He carried out numerous resource programs, including timber management, fire and fuel management, and watershed, range and recreation.
Mr. Laverty earned a master's degree in Public Administration from George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., in 1981 and is a 1997 graduate of the Executive Leadership Program of Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government.