The official website of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council

Council Staff - Mark D. Bisgeier

Mark D. Bisgeier
General Counsel


Mark D. Bisgeier is General Counsel of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council.  He is a member of the Council’s senior management team and serves as the RESTORE Council’s chief legal officer, managing outside counsel and overseeing diverse regulatory, transactional and administrative portfolios.

From 2012 to 2015 Bisgeier served as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he was a senior policy advisor and counselor to the Under Secretary and senior agency leadership.   The NRE mission area oversees the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Forest Service, with aggregate annual budgets exceeding $10 billion.

At USDA he participated in negotiating, reviewing and implementing numerous NRE strategies and initiatives, and provided policy advice on regulatory programs and administrative matters.  He was centrally involved with USDA’s membership on the RESTORE Council and the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustee Council in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Prior to his Federal service Bisgeier practiced law in California and New York, developing an international practice focused on complex technology and media business transactions.

He was a founding partner of an investment bank in Los Angeles and Tokyo whose international partner was the Japanese trading company Nissho Iwai.  The firm focused on acquisitions and large financing transactions in media and technology.

Bisgeier previously served in Washington, D.C. on the organization of CongressBridge, the first ever real- time satellite link between the U.S. Congress and the Soviet legislature, and with the Democratic National Committee on a plan for its first nationwide satellite video network.

He also served as Senior Counsel, Vice President and Senior Consultant at Tri-Star Pictures, Inc., where he helped establish and implement the studio’s legal affairs policies and practices.

Bisgeier holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley.   He is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia, California and New York.