Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest

Tom Tidwell

The Northwest pulled in another upper-rank person in the Obama Administration with announcement today of Tom Tidwell as chief of the U.S. Forest Service – a very big-deal agency in the Northwest.

Tidwell has been a career Forest Service employee, and described now as a “Montana forester.” But areas to the west of there have a fair claim on him too. From the USDA press release:

Tidwell has spent 32 years with the Forest Service in a variety of positions. He began his Forest Service career on the Boise National Forest, and has since worked in eight different national forests, across three regions. He has worked at all levels of the agency in a variety of positions, including District Ranger, Forest Supervisor, and Legislative Affairs Specialist in the Washington Office.

Tidwell’s field experience includes working from the rural areas of Nevada and Idaho all the way to the urban forests in California and the Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah, where he served as Forest Supervisor during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

He seems to have navigated the rugged resource waters with some efficiency; offhand, no major squabbles from his years around the Northwest come to mind.