The longtime leader of Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife is retiring after nearly 10 years at the helm and almost 40 at the state agency.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Curt Melcher.
Courtesy of ODFW
The agency announced Wednesday that Director Curt Melcher will step down by April 1. He was first hired as a temporary, seasonal employee at the department in 1985 when he was still in college.
Gov. Tina Kotek’s office has started a recruitment process that will wrap up by April, according to a news release from the department. A new director will be appointed by the state’s six-member Fish and Wildlife Commission in partnership with Kotek, the release said.
In it, Melcher described his job as an “honor and a privilege.”
“We have a dedicated and talented workforce and I leave the agency in good hands,” he said.
He’s led the department since 2014, including approximately 1,000 employees and a two-year budget of more than $487 million. He went from serving as interim to director in 2015. He had previously spent seven years as deputy director.
Melcher took over the department in the midst of a budget crisis. It had for years relied too heavily on declining sales of hunting and fishing licenses for revenue, leading to a $32 million budget gap. Under his tenure, the agency maintained stable finances without raising fees on hunters and anglers, the release said.
Melcher is from northwest Oregon and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He started working seasonal jobs for the fish and wildlife agency during his studies, and continued to pick up temporary work there for nearly five years before being hired as a fisheries biologist in 1990, according to his LinkedIn profile. For more than a decade, he oversaw fish surveys on the Columbia and Willamette rivers and was an administrator in the agency’s fish division before ascending to deputy director.
Curt Melcher helped conserve and open access to 10,000 acres of land around the lower Deschutes River as director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. He'll retire in April after nearly a decade in charge.
Bonnie Moreland / US Fish and Wildlife
As director, Melcher helped conserve and open access to nearly 16,000 acres of wildlife and riparian habitat along the Minam River in northeast Oregon as well as 10,000 acres of the lower Deschutes River. Melcher also helped foster cooperative agreements with six tribes to restore and improve hunting and fishing access on their historic lands and to collaborate on regulation.
Mary Wahl, chair of the state fish and wildlife commission, said in the release that members want the next director to have a strong record of protecting fish, wildlife and critical habitat.
“One who will be an exceptional leader creating a vision for ODFW’s work that meets the challenges Oregon faces from accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss impacts,” she said.
Guido Rahr, president of the nonprofit Wild Salmon Center, said in an email that the group wants the next director to carry on the department’s work improving wild salmon populations alongside hatcheries programs and to respond to challenges such as climate change and habitat loss.
“We hope the department will continue to proactively protect wild salmon, steelhead and trout around the region – for all our benefit,” he said.
This story was originally published by the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
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