Employee Profile
Raymond "Rusty" Lee
Field Office Manager
Needles
Rusty Lee was born in Tennessee, raised in San Diego, California, but rural Nevada is the place he considers home.
Graduating from the Colorado School of Mines during a sharp downturn in the minerals markets, he was hired by BLM in the Winnemucca Field Office to do minerals inspections and enforcement. He fell in love with the area and the job and things progressed from there.
He served with the Forest Service in Utah, adding engineering, vegetation management and roads to his experience. He then returned to BLM in Tonopah, Nevada, as a planner. Subsequently, he was promoted to natural resources supervisor and dealt with grazing, the wild horse and burro program, and wildlife issues, which lead to an interest in the Mojave transition plant community in south central Nevada. His time on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has rounded out his experience with a hefty dose of recreation and rural politics. This most recent position taught him how to connect with local communities to create rural development and education partnerships.
Overall, he has been with the federal government since he was 18 years old, with a break for college. He has served with the departments of the Navy, Army, Agriculture and Interior. He has a total of 25 years of federal service, seventeen of those years have been in resource work, thirteen with BLM.
His childhood home was San Diego, but he has also lived in Maryland; Seoul, Korea; Golden, Colorado; Winnemucca, Carvers and Tonopah Nevada; Ferron, Moab, Kanab and Henrieville, Utah. With a population at nearly fifty thousand, the Mojave Valley, where he now resides, is the largest community he has experienced in twenty-five years.
He has a bachelor's degree in physical science and geological engineering. He also has all but the thesis in mining engineering.
He loves spending time outdoors. He is an avid hiker and enjoys long fall weekends in his sheep camp.
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