Gov. Jerry Brown on June 18 appointed David Bunn, a UC Davis alum, faculty member and administrator of international programs, to become director of the state Department of Conservation, which manages and regulates the state’s agricultural lands, open space, mines and oilfields.

Bunn

He is slated to assume the new post on July 6, pending Senate confirmation.

Bunn holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Animal Science and serves as the director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Genomics to Improve Poultry, established in 2013 with a $6 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

He would retain his faculty position and transition to the technical advisory committee of the poultry innovation lab. 

Bunn holds a doctoral degree in conservation ecology, a master’s degree in international agricultural development and a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology, all from UC Davis. He’s worked in academia, state government and the private sector, in California, Africa and Nepal.

He served as deputy director of the state Department of Fish and Game (now the Department of Fish and Wildlife) from 1999 to 2003.

He then came to UC Davis as a project director and researcher in the School of Veterinary Medicine, where he has been affiliated with the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center. He has been associate director of the Office of International Programs in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences since 2011.

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