President Obama has appointed a Starkville native to run the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Sam Hamilton, a Starkville native and a graduate of Mississippi State University, is a career biologist and director of the Fish and Wildlife Service”s Southeast region. Hamilton has been with the service 30 years, the last 12 as Southeast regional director in Atlanta.
Hamilton is one of two Mississippians appointed to posts by Obama on Wednesday. Obama also nominated Clarksdale native Bob Abbey as director of the Bureau of Land Management.
Abbey is a Clarksdale native and lives in Reno, Nev. He was the chief architect of the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, initiated in 1999 after a wildfire burned 2 million acres of public land. He headed BLM”s Jackson office from 1992 to 1995. He retired in July 2005.
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