{"id":349736,"date":"2010-02-22T07:51:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T12:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3141"},"modified":"2010-02-22T07:51:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T12:51:06","slug":"fws-director-hamilton-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/349736","title":{"rendered":"FWS Director Hamilton dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Greenwire<\/a>: Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a> Director Sam Hamilton died Saturday in Colorado<\/a> after experiencing chest pains at Keystone Resort, where he was vacationing with friends.<\/p>\n

His death was confirmed by the Summit County coroner’s office, which issued a press release noting that Hamilton’s cause of death was consistent with an underlying heart condition.<\/p>\n

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in a statement, said the department had “suffered a great loss,” and he praised Hamilton as a visionary leader “whose years of service and passionate dedication to his work have left an indelible mark on the lands and wildlife we cherish.”<\/p>\n

The 54-year-old Georgia native had been FWS director just five and a half months, during which time the agency made several major policy shifts, including developing a comprehensive response to threats faced by plants and animals from climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among the major initiatives undertaken since Hamilton’s appointment were last September’s proposal to designate 200,000 square miles of Alaska as critical habitat for the threatened polar bear, whose glacial habitat is at risk from warming climate, as well as a more recent decision to deny federal protection to the American pika, a small mammal that lives in California’s Sierra Nevada.<\/p>\n

Hamilton had also pledged to make reforms to the 1973 Endangered Species Act<\/a>, including provisions dealing with critical habitat and the role of interagency consultation in protecting species.<\/p>\n

“No matter which way you turn, somebody is not going to be happy,” Hamilton told E&E last December (Greenwire<\/em><\/a>, Dec. 24, 2009). “Our focus is on trying to recover endangered species; our goal is to try to get them off the list. So as long as we keep our eye on that goal and work on definitions and work on policy to further that goal, we’ll be in good shape.”<\/p>\n

Hamilton is survived by his wife, Becky, two sons, and a grandson.<\/p>\n

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Greenwire: Fish and Wildlife Service Director Sam Hamilton died Saturday in Colorado after experiencing chest pains at Keystone Resort, where he was vacationing with friends. His death was confirmed by the Summit County coroner’s office, which issued a press release noting that Hamilton’s cause of death was consistent with an underlying heart condition. Interior Secretary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}