White House recognizes FWS's Rick Bennett for climate leadership

Dr. Rick Bennett, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region regional scientist, a 27-year career Service veteran, and a member of the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative Steering Committee, was named the GreenGov Presidential Awards Climate Champion for 2016. Rick was honored with this award for his leadership of the Department of the Interior’s Hurricane Sandy Response Team during a ceremony at the White House on September 7th. 

Following the devastation left by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Dr. Richard Bennett led the Department of the Interior team charged with helping the region recover, overseeing 167 million dollars in project funding to revitalize the Northeast, and to protect it from future storms and sea level rise. Dr. Bennett worked to launch more than 100 sustainability-focused projects, and led a team that developed performance metrics for climate resilience that are changing the way the Federal government prepares for severe weather events.

Rick stepped in following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and oversaw the design and implementation of $167 million in FWS project funding directed to multiple locations ravaged by the storm’s high winds and storm surge. In total, Rick and his team worked to launch more than 100 sustainability-focused projects that not only helped impacted areas and local economies recover from the storm, but that will also help protect vital coastal wildlife habitat from future storms and rising sea levels associated with climate change.

FWS Director Dan Ashe praised Rick's achievement and the significance of his contributions in a Service-wide announcement this week, pointing out that the performance metrics for climate resilience developed by his team "are changing the way the entire federal government prepares for and responds to severe weather events."

 Read the news release on the FWS Northeast Region website.