Billings, Mont. • The head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is stepping down after a 14-month tenure in which the agency proposed broad changes to rules governing protections for thousands of species and pushed for more hunting and fishing on federal lands, officials said Thursday.
Greg Sheehan will leave the agency next week to return to his family and home in Utah, spokesman Gavin Shire said. He led the wildlife service since last June as the senior political official appointed under President Donald Trump in a newly-created deputy director position.
Under his tenure, the wildlife service moved recently to end a longstanding practice that automatically gave the same protections to threatened species as it gives more critically endangered species.