Director, Region 1
(CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT)

Detailed Work History for Mike Bartlett

In 2008, I retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with 37 years of federal service under my belt. For most of those 37 years, I worked in regulatory programs, protecting wetlands and other water bodies under the Clean Water Act and the Federal Power Act, as well as rare species under the Endangered Species Act.

I spent the last sixteen years of my career directing the Service’s regulatory offices throughout New England, often working in a tense, politically charged atmosphere. Sixteen years overseeing staff that were dealing with issues ranging from people/Piping Plover conflicts on the beaches of Cape Cod to a protracted dispute with Maine’s salmon aquaculture industry over the use of European stock in their pens, from a proposed mall development in over 15 acres of Massachusetts wetlands to a proposed port expansion on an undeveloped island in Searsport, Maine, from a major FERC settlement on the Connecticut River at 10 Mile Falls to the removal of Edwards Dam. In my spare time I sat on a Trustee Board allocating the $25,000,000 court ordered natural resource damage settlement associated with PCB contamination of New Bedford harbor—and started the dam removal program in New Hampshire (actually I “stole” the idea from the Natural Resource Conservation Service in Maine!)
When I retired from the Service, I received EPA’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Department of Interior’s Meritorious Service Award.

Six months after I left the Fish and Wildlife Service, I accepted a position directing New Hampshire Audubon. At the time, NHA was on the edge of “bankruptcy”, laboring under a $3,000,000 debt and an annual deficit approaching $500,000. Staff morale was dragging and programs (e.g., environmental education and advocacy) were shrinking. When I left NHA in 2016, we had eliminated 80% of the debt service and 100% of the deficit. Staff morale was high, our environmental education programs were expanding and the organization had moved from a Charity Navigator rating of zero to the highest level possible (4 stars).

After a short “retirement”, I was elected to the NWF Board in June, 2018. I also serve as Treasurer on the Board of the Concord (NH) chapter of Trout Unlimited.