Supporter Spotlight: Dale Greenley
A lifelong Oregonian, Dale Greenley has been a member of OEC since he graduated college in 1970. Like others at that moment in time, he had witnessed the degradation of Oregon’s forests and environment firsthand and felt called to do something about it.
“The environment has always been my biggest concern,” says Dale, a charter member of OEC’s monthly giving Evergreen Society. “My dad was an avid hunter, and I often joined him on hunting trips. As a kid of just 6 or 7, I remember traveling to our campsite at Brewster Creek in the coast range, driving into the forest along a steep, muddy and deeply rutted road in Dad’s 1936 Chevy pickup.”
One year, Dale and his dad arrived to find that the campsite was gone. No creek. No old-growth Douglas fir. Just silt. Dale recounts it was as though they were standing on the moon. He recalls his father saying, “There ought to be a law against it.”
Throughout Dale’s childhood, he remembers seeing more beloved natural places forever changed by accelerated clear-cutting for timber production—from Bear Mountain to the homestead where his mom was raised in the foothills of the coast range. “It hurt to look out and see a barren, eroded landscape in a place once thick with trees and ferns as high as your head.”
In the 1970s, in addition to getting involved with OEC, Dale worked with Hollywood cinematographers on a film showing underwater footage of steelhead in a pristine shaded creek compared to the same creek after the area had been clear-cut. Frank Moore, a noteworthy conservationist who was appointed to Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Commission in 1969, traveled around the country to show the film, eventually sharing it with environmental champion Nathaniel Reed at the Department of the Interior. It was powerful advocacy like this that helped to pass the Oregon Forest Practices Act and the Clean Water Act of 1972.
Dale was born and raised in Roseburg, Oregon. “Almost all of us hunted, fished, and camped,” he says. “Those were some of the best times of my life and when I formed a connection with the natural world around me.”
After a career as a microbiology researcher, Dale now volunteers as a historian for Douglas County. Aside from fly fishing, one thing that has remained constant throughout Dale’s life is his commitment to doing his part to help protect Oregon’s environment. “Today with global warming, it’s clear that life as we know it is going to change. That’s why I’m glad there are groups like OEC working on behalf of people and the environment.”
We’re honored to have Dale as a charter member of our monthly giving Evergreen Society and for his ongoing support all these years! We thank Dale for all the many ways he cares for this cherished place we share as Oregonians. Thank you for making a difference!
You can join Dale in your support of Oregon’s environment by joining our Evergreen Society with your monthly donation. As Dale says, “It’s easy! And this way, I know my support is always current.”
Become a member of OEC’s Evergreen Society!
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