Dave Whittekiend spent his boyhood moving from one western town to the next. The son of a dedicated Forest Service employee, he learned early on the significance of the agency’s efforts in managing and protecting forests and grasslands. Dave is passionate about managing lands for the benefit of the public and facilitating collaboration between government and private sectors to do so.
Dave began earning his Forest Service stripes in 1988 as a seasonal range technician on the North Kaibab Ranger District in Arizona, where he built miles of fence, fought wildfires, and counted more cows than he cares to remember. Eager to experience the multiple facets of the agency, Dave went on to work on forests in Montana, Idaho and Missouri, as well as in legislative affairs at the Forest Service National Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Now the Forest Supervisor on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, one of the most visited forests in the national forest system with over 13 million visitors a year, Dave is committed to sustaining its health, diversity and productivity. When he’s not managing the forest’s 2.1 million acres, he’s probably camping, backpacking, running, mountain biking or fly fishing there.