Jay Jensen

Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Jay Jensen serves as the Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Jensen has responsibility for the U.S. Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of National Forest System lands and helps provide assistance to more than 10 million family-forest landowners.

Since May 2005, Jensen has been Executive Director of the Council of Western State Foresters/Western Forestry Leadership Coalition. The Coalition is a federal-state governmental partnership. Jensen had served earlier as the Coalitions Government Affairs Director.

He has also served as Senior Forestry Advisor for the Western Governors Association, where he was responsible for their biomass energy program. Before that, as lead forestry advisor for the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, Jensen helped develop programs under the 2002 Farm Bill. He has also served as lead policy analyst for the National Association of State Foresters.

Jensen has been a member of the Society of American Foresters since 1998. He grew up in southern California and most recently hails from Colorado. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and an M.S. in Forestry from Colorado State University.