Lynn Dwyer

FORMER PROGRAM DIRECTOR FOR THE NATIONAL FISH & WILDLIFE PROGRAM

Lynn Dwyer has had a long career in conservation. Over 26 years to be exact, most of which were spent working for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as program director of the Long Island Sound Futures Fund. Lynn retired in March 2024, leaving behind a legacy of over 650 grants and $56 million invested into Long Island Sound conservation projects including those with City Island Oyster Reef. A native of Long Island’s South Shore, Dwyer holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University. She started her career in the private sector working in marketing for a banker training company in Washington, DC, and an accounting software company in San Francisco. Her interest in conservation was sparked during graduate school at San Francisco State University while pursuing a master’s in public administration. Dwyer wrote her graduate thesis on an innovative endangered species program rolled out by the U.S. Department of the Interior. This led to her first experience working in the environmental sector. A conservation career in California was born, as Dwyer worked in water quality and endangered species projects for the state. She joined Sustainable Conservation, a regional non-profit, and worked at the Environmental Defense Fund. After six years, Dwyer relocated to New York to be closer to family. That’s when she settled into her role as program director at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, drawing upon her diverse skill set of field experience and conservation management knowledge. Over the past 20 years, she’s supported a range of projects to test innovative approaches to conservation, deliver transformative projects and support people and communities who value their local waters and take a direct role in their future. Dwyer has fostered environmental projects from the rivers of the Gulf of Maine, to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean in New York and New Jersey through the Delaware River Watershed and most intensively in the Long Island Sound Watershed… encompassing New Hampshire, MA, VT, CT and NY.