Roy Elicker

I have had the honor and pleasure of working almost my entire career in conservation. My interest in the outdoors from an early age back east in New Jersey led me to gain both a BS and MS in wildlife biology at Rutgers University, and later a law degree and focus on Environmental Law at the Northwest School of Law at Lewis and Clark College here in Portland. I began my wildlife career in 1975 routing educational wood signs and writing press releases for the NJ Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Shellfisheries, and later became a Fisheries Biologist, until I left the East Coast for law school. After practicing law for almost a decade, including stints at the National Wildlife Federation and the Trust for Public Land, I found my way back to state government in 1993 via the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, where I worked for the next 20+ years, ultimately becoming the Director from about 2007 through 2014. My final employment, prior to retirement in 2020, was as the lead fisheries management position for the US Fish and Wildlife Service here in the Pacific NW. I was also honored to represent Oregon on the international Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada for several years. 

Since moving to Portland in 1979, I lived primarily in one of Portland’s great neighborhoods in NE Portland, and counted myself very fortunate to move out here to Sauvie Island in 2022, living on the Columbia River, the site of so much of my work in fisheries throughout my career. I consider myself firmly grounded here on Sauvie Island, being that it was my great local outdoor escape hatch for all of the years I have lived in Portland, and contains one of the Portland area’s finest examples of public recreation in ODFW’s Sauvie Island Wildlife Area. And among my other Sauvie Island credentials, I was one of the many ODFW staff to show up and fill sandbags to help protect key Island infrastructure during the great ’96 flood.

I am pleased and honored to be appointed an Associate Board member of the WMSWCD. I also sit on the Oregon Wildlife Foundation Board, an organization dedicated to assisting in funding wildlife habitat and access projects throughout the state, and ODFW’s NW Committee for Access and Habitat Projects.