Born circa 1951 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Abbey is a 1969 graduate of Clarksdale High School. He went on to earn a B.S. in Resource Management from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1973.  

 

Abbey spent more than 32 years in public service, working with state and federal land management agencies before retiring from the federal government in July 2005. Straight out of college, Abbey took a job with the Mississippi State Park system, where he worked for more than four years before accepting a position with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In that job, he first interacted with the BLM, to which he soon applied for a job. Abbey was hired by BLM in 1980 for a position in its Casper, Wyoming, field office. Between 1980 and 1992, Abbey worked there, moving on to positions as assistant district manager in Yuma, Arizona and as budget analyst in Washington, D.C. In 1992, Abbey was promoted to head of the Jackson, Mississippi, field office, where he remained into 1995, when he was named acting state BLM director in Colorado, where he served from 1995 through 1997. From 1997 to 2005, Abbey served as the Nevada State Director for BLM, providing oversight for 48 million acres of public land managed by the bureau in the state. He oversaw a staff of 750 employees and managed an annual budget of $51 million. While in Nevada, Abbey was the principal BLM proponent for the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, a plan to restore North America’s largest desert to its original state by removing invasive plant species and making other changes. One anti-environmental stain on Abbey’s record, which no one raised during his confirmation process, was a federal administrative law judge ruling that Abbey had, in October 2004, illegally dismissed a manager overseeing the cleanup of an abandoned copper mine for pursuing worker safety, radiation, and air and water pollution violations.   The decision was affirmed on appeal.

 

Abbey retired in July 2005, after which he became a partner in a private consulting firm called Abbey, Stubbs, & Ford, LLC, which had offices in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. He also served as a member of the University of Nevada College of Agriculture Dean’s Advisory Committee and as a board member on several statewide and national non-profit organizations, including Friends of Nevada Wilderness. His post-retirement criticism of the environmental damage caused by off-road vehicles stirred the ire of some who advocate such activities on public land.

 

Abbey and his wife Linda have been married for 32 years and currently reside in Reno, Nevada. They have one daughter, Leigh.

 

Statement of Robert Abbey to House Committee on Natural Resources (PDF)

Dixon v. BLM, Recommended Decision and Order (PDF)

Nothing Positive in Mining Bill (op-ed by Bob Abbey)

Nevada BLM Cleans Out Cleanup Project Manager (by Laura Paskus, High Country News)

 

He spent 33 years in various positions with the Bureau of Land Management, Bonneville Power Administration and the US Forest Service. For 16 of those years, he served as forest supervisor on the Clearwater and Targhee National Forests. Caswell was also deputy forest supervisor at Boise National Forest and acting deputy regional forester in Missoula, Montana.

 

Then Caswell headed Idaho’s state Office of Species Conservation under Gov. Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID). In charge of endangered species issues and management, the office won the state legislature’s approval in 2001 for controversial issues involving wolf management and grizzly bears in Yellowstone.

 

In taking over BLM, Caswell worked again for Kempthorne, who was the head of the Interior Department.

 

Kempthorne Lauds Senate Confirmation of Jim Caswell as Director of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (DOI)