After 44 years of dedicated federal service, Midwest Regional Director Charlie Wooley has announced his retirement. We at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would like to thank Wooley for his commitment to the Great Lakes and the wider conservation mission of the agency. In late December 2022, Wooley will be stepping away from his regional leadership role in Bloomington, Minnesota.
With a long history of working in the Great Lakes ecosystem, Wooley has devoted his career to supporting strong and sustainable fisheries, with a focus on clean water for wildlife and people alike. Named as Midwest Regional Director in 2019, he has been honored with many awards throughout his career. Most recently, this includes the George Bird Grinnell Memorial Award for Distinguished Service in 2022 - the highest individual honor in natural resource management.
Upon graduating from the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, Wooley got his start as a fisheries biologist in a career that has brought him to all the way up to Alaska and back east to Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and Florida before settling in the Upper Midwest. As his time in the field deepened, Wooley established a reputation as a collaborator and devoted advocate of conservation partnerships. Named by the agency director as one of 10 Unusually Outstanding Employees in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in both 1989 and 1992, many took note of his ability to bring people together to solve practical challenges.
Wooley served as a program analyst in Washington, D.C., where he worked with the President’s Domestic Policy Council Interagency Task Force on Wetlands and the Merchant Marine Fisheries Committee for the House of Representatives.
After spending time in Washington, D.C., Wooley returned to the field in a managing role, as the field supervisor for the East Lansing Ecological Services Field Office in Michigan. Building a program and a team from the ground up over the course of almost a decade, Wooley worked with others to manage a variety of sensitive species and habitats in Michigan and the Great Lakes.
Since 1996, Wooley has continuously served as the Department of the Interior’s Trustee to the Great Lakes Fishery Trust. Wooley also served as senior executive representative for the agency on the Invasive Carp Regional Coordinating Committee, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Executive Council advising tribal fisheries management for U.S. vs. Michigan (Treaty of 1836).
Continuing his career in the Midwest Region, Wooley joined the regional directorate team as the Assistant Regional Director for Ecological Services and oversaw endangered species, contaminants and wetland protection programs, as well as various Great Lakes and Mississippi River activities.
In 2004, Wooley began serving as Deputy Regional Director where he assisted the Regional Director in formulating, developing and leading programs, policy and procedures to carry out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service mission in the eight states of the Midwest Region and across all the programs that make up the agency.
Over the course of his career, Wooley brokered agreements with diverse, and sometimes even divisive groups, establishing effective partnerships across a huge geography. In December 2018, Wooley was appointed by the President to serve a six-year term as the Federal Commissioner representing the United States on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. As a strong field biologist in his own right, Wooley also authored 15 technical papers on the biology and life history of the striped bass, sturgeon and ecosystem restoration. In 2001, he was honored with the Department of the Interior’s Meritorious Service Award and in 2012, with its Distinguished Service Award, Interior’s highest award.
Wooley has led a federal workforce of more than 1,000 dedicated civil servants across America’s heartland with reason, compassion and vision. Remembered for his warmth, Wooley leaves the agency a respected leader. We thank him for tireless advocacy for wildlife and people.
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