Dr. Mike Dombeck

Dr. Michael (Mike) Dombeck dedicated a quarter century of his career to managing public lands in the United States. He is the only person to date to lead both the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, bringing the total amount of public lands he has overseen during his career to nearly 500 million acres.

​​

Mike grew up in Wisconsin’s rural Sawyer County and spent much of his childhood outdoors, exploring the woods, lakes and streams. He later earned a bachelor's in biology from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, a master’s in Zoology from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in Fisheries Biology from Iowa State University.

​​

Mike began his career as a fisheries technician with the U.S. Forest Service in 1978. He moved to the Department of Interior in 1989, where he eventually became Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1994. At the BLM, he created a long-term vision for advancing ecosystem management, watershed management, and watershed restoration. He returned to the U.S. Forest Service as Chief in 1997, leading the development of a national resource agenda for the agency focusing on watershed health and restoration, recreation, sustainable forest management, and a long-term forest roads policy. One of his most notable policies was the development of the Roadless Rule in 2001 which protected 58 million acres of remote National Forest lands from road building and other development.

​​

From 2001 to 2010 Mike served as a University of Wisconsin System Fellow and Professor of Global Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He also served as the Executive Director of the David Smith Post-Doctoral Conservation Research Fellowship Program from 2005 to 2021 where he trained and mentored nearly 100 post-doctoral, early-career scientists in conservation.

​​

He has authored, co-authored, and edited over 300 articles and scholarly publications. These include the books Watershed Restoration: Principles and Practices, From Conquest to Conservation: Our Public Lands Legacy, and The Business of the Conservation Nonprofit. Mike has earned numerous honors and awards, including the highest award in career federal service, the Presidential Rank—Distinguished Executive Award. He was inducted into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame in 2023. He remains focused on the importance of water, connecting people to nature, and keeping wild places wild. He joined the Burke Center as Scientific Advisor in 2026.