Though born and raised elsewhere, Jerry Becker is now a de facto indigenous member of Oregon's Elk River watershed. The credo he lives by is Respect. He and his family have lived lightly "long before it was cool." An ecoforester, Jerry manages the woods sensitively with an eye to its wholeness.
For the past thirty years he has worked with Friends of Elk River to protect wilderness regions in the watershed. In the last decade he formed the Elk River Land Trust, working with private landowners to protect agricultural and forest lands from development. Ripples of his gentle respectfulness permeate an entire watershed. (www.foer.org, www.erlt.org.)