There’s a new leader at Michigan's Department of Natural Resources.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer named former state lottery commissioner Scott Bowen as the new DNR director on Tuesday.
Bowen is no stranger to the innerworkings of bureaucracy, spending nine years with the Michigan Lottery, from 2008-2017.
He previously served elsewhere in state government, as a district court judge in Wyoming and as director of the Office of the State Employer.
Bowen also unsuccessfully ran for state attorney general in 2006.
He currently works for a technology company.
Bowen said he plans to draw on his government experience in his new role.
“I’m excited to join the DNR team. It will be an honor to contribute a chapter to the agency's long history of managing and protecting the natural and cultural resources that help define what it means to be from Michigan,” Bowen said in a press release.
Bowen succeeds acting Director Shannon Lott who the department says will stay on in a leadership capacity.
The last permanent DNR director Dan Eichinger was reassigned to a different agency, the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, to start the governor’s second term.
In April, Eichinger left that role to take on a position with Ferris State University.