Andy Buchsbaum
Andy Buchsbaum
Regional Executive Director
Great Lakes Regional Center - Ann Arbor, MI
734-887-7100

Andy Buchsbaum is the Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation’s regional Great Lakes Regional Center.

The 20-staff regional office works with NWF and other organizations in each of the Great Lakes states. Major projects include Great Lakes restoration; protection of the Great Lakes from global warming; prevention of the introduction of aquatic invasive species; Great Lakes water management reform; environmental education; and protection of Lake Superior from sulfide mining.

Andy has testified on a wide range of Great Lakes issues before state, regional and national government bodies, including the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, the International Joint Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Michigan legislature, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, and the Indiana Department of the Environment.

He is currently the co-chair of the 90-member " Healing Our Waters--Great Lakes Coalition," the primary non-governmental coalition championing Great Lakes restoration. He serves as one of the designated conservation representatives on the Council of Great Lakes Governor’s Advisory Group on the Great Lakes Charter Annex 2001, and was a lead negotiator in securing a proposed Compact to implement the Annex in 2005. He is also a Trustee (a member of the Board of Directors) for the Michigan-based foundation, the Great Lakes Fisheries Trust, and a Board member of the Leslie Science and Nature Center in Ann Arbor. He also co-chaired the multi-stakeholder Mercury Workgroup of the Ohio EPA’s TMDL Advisory Group from 1999-2001, developing consensus recommendations that were adopted by the Director of the Ohio EPA. He also was the chair of the Education Committee for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Centennial Celebration at the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge in September, 2003.

Andy has co-authored numerous media-generating publications while at NWF, including:

  • Pollution Paralysis II: Code Red for Watersheds (a national report on the Clean Water Act's watershed cleanup program) (2000)
  • Clean the Lakes, Clean the Rain: Mercury in Rain Is Polluting the Great Lakes (1999)
  • Ecosystem Shock: The Devastating Impacts of Invasive Species on the Great Lakes Food Web (2004).

He also conceived and edited:

  • Prescription for Great Lakes Protection and Restoration (2005)
  • America’s North Coast: A Benefit-Cost Analysis of a Program to Protect and Restore the Great Lakes (2007).

Prior to joining NWF in 1998, Andy was the senior attorney for the Midwest office of the National Environmental Law Center and the Program Director for the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan. There, he published numerous reports and studies on environmental policy, law and science.

Andy got his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, his law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Laws from Georgetown University Law Center. He has published articles in law reviews on environmental law and campaign finance reform. For the past 10 years, he has taught environmental law courses at the University of Michigan Law School.