Michael P. Dombeck is an American conservationist, educator, scientist, and outdoorsman. He served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management from 1994 to 1997 and was the 14th Chief of the United States Forest Service from 1997 to 2001. Dombeck also served as UW System Fellow and Professor of Global Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point from 2001 to 2010. He has been the executive director of the David Smith Post-Doctoral Conservation Research Fellowship since 2005. Early career Dombeck worked as a fishing guide for 11 summers near Hayward, Wisconsin, which informed the path his career would take. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and earned a B.S. in biology and general sciences and an M.S.T. in biology and education degrees. He attended the University of Minnesota, earning an M.S. in Zoology and later earned a PhD from Iowa State University in 1984. His research included studies on the movement, behavior, reproduction, and early life ecology of the muskellunge, Wisconsin's state fish. His research lead him to become Program Chairman of the 1st International Muskellunge Symposium held in 1984 with proceedings published by the American Fisheries Society. After three years of teaching zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Dombeck joined the United States Forest Service (USFS) as a fisheries biologist on the Hiawatha National Forest. He held additional Forest Service assignments throughout the Midwest and California, focused on both aquatic research and fisheries management, after which he was promoted to National Fisheries Program Manager for the USFS where he led the integration of aquatic resources considerations into national forest management and the Rise to the Future Program. He spent a year in 1989 as a LEGIS Fellow working in the U.S. Senate on agriculture and appropriations issues. Federal Service Bureau of Land Management (BLM) At the beginning of the George H. W. Bush administration, Dombeck was assigned as Special Assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Land Management and later was named Science Advisor. At the beginning of the Clinton Administration, he was assigned Acting Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Lands and Minerals Management. In 1994 he was appointed acting director of the Bureau of Land Management by Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt. Dombeck held that position until 1997 when Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman named him the 14th Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. Dombeck's time at the BLM was marked