TWS member Tony Wasley elected AFWA president

Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies members have elected Nevada Department of Wildlife Director Tony Wasley as the organization’s new president.

The announcement came during AFWA’s 111^th Annual Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.

“I am honored to be selected to serve as President of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies,” said Wasley, a TWS member, in a press release. “The work of the association and all its members is critically important in making conservation more relevant in our states, provinces and territories. I am looking forward to working with our members and friends to create broader engagement and to achieve our common conservation goals.”

Wasley will serve as president through September 2022.

“Tony Wasley is a leading voice in the national debate over wildlife agency funding models and relevancy,” said outgoing president Sara Parker Pauley, director of the Missouri Department of Conservation. “His leadership and innovation will be vital as we forge forward with the challenges and priorities of today.”

Wasley has worked for the Nevada Department of Wildlife since 1997 and has been director since 2013. He chairs AFWA’s Education, Outreach and Diversity Committee and co-chairs the national Relevancy Working Group. A past president of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, he currently chairs that organization’s Sagebrush Executive Oversight Committee.

Wasley is currently the chair of the North American Wetland Conservation Act Council and is a graduate of the National Conservation Leadership Institute.  He is a past co-chair of the National Landscape Conservation Cooperative Council, past-chair of the Pacific Flyway Council, and past board member and chair for the Intermountain West Joint Venture Management Board.

He earned a bachelor’s degrees in both wildlife management and biological sciences from California State University and earned a master’s degree in biological sciences from Idaho State University with a National Science Foundation Research Assistantship.

At its annual meeting, AFWA also passed several resolutions, including support for the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit program, enhancing the Fall Flights program and increasing state agency investments in Canadian waterfowl breeding grounds, increasing awareness of the need to control and manage free-ranging cats, boosting state involvement in the National Fish Habitat Partnership, strengthening State Wildlife Action Plans and landscape conservation and supporting a National Wildlife Disease Surveillance Network.