Tom Mullikin. (Provided/SC Department of Natural Resources)
COLUMBIA — The board overseeing the state’s natural resources department has chosen an environmental attorney, research professor and retired military officer to lead the agency.
Tom Mullikin is expected to take over from current director Robert Boyles, who is retiring in February after five years overseeing the agency in charge of hunting, fishing, boating and conservation efforts.
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He received unanimous approval Thursday from the agency’s seven-member governing board. However, Mullikin still needs to be confirmed by the Senate.
“Tom Mullikin will lead our world-class staff to the next level as South Carolina continues to rise as a global leader in natural resources stewardship,” Boyles said in a Thursday news release. “I look forward to working together with him to ensure a successful transition.”
Mullikin works as a research professor for both Coastal Carolina University and the University of South Carolina’s hospitality and tourism school.
In 2019, Gov. Henry McMaster chose him to oversee a commission tasked with coming up with solutions to flooding, especially in cities along the coast and rivers.
“His extensive background in environmental law and policy will allow him to bring invaluable expertise to DNR,” McMaster said in the Thursday news release. “He has my full support.”
Mullikin has also publicly questioned international climate agreements and their impact on the economy, and he lobbied in Congress against a 2009 bill that would have reduced the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, The Post and Courier reported after his appointment to the flood commission.
Mullikin led the State Guard, South Carolina’s volunteer militia that aids in emergency response, from 2014 to 2018, after retiring as a legal officer for the U.S. Army Reserve. He’s an avid outdoorsman who has completed scuba dives in every ocean and climbed mountains on every continent, according to a news release.
He leads an annual 30-day trek across South Carolina for SC7, a partnership between two nonprofits that encourages people to get outside and appreciate their environment.
Outside of his environmental work, his Camden law firm led an unsuccessful bid to rename the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that outlawed school segregation after the earlier-filed Briggs v. Elliot case originating in Clarendon County. (Brown v. Board came from the Kansas lawsuit that was among five combined before the nation’s high court.)
“I am honored to be selected for appointment as director of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and look forward to working with the amazing staff to continue and advance the important work of SCDNR,” Mullikin said in the news release.