The Public Lands Foundation grants to Ed Booker, posthumously, it’s Outstanding Lifetime Service Award.  The Foundation provides this award to deserving persons who have perpetuated and enhanced the proud tradition of public service.  Ed exemplifies that tradition through a lifetime of service in managing and protecting the public lands.

Ed Booker was born and raised in Dewey, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in Forestry and Range Management.  Following his service in the Korean War as a First Lieutenant in the Artillery, Ed joined the Grazing Service in Salmon, Idaho as a Range Examiner. He then he soon became the Assistant District Manager at Boise, Idaho.  Ed’s leadership skills were quickly recognized and he became the District Manager at Burns, Oregon.

He then spent a few years in Wyoming State Office at Cheyenne where his duties included management of several major wild fires.  In 1965 Ed became the Range Management Officer in the Oregon State Office at Portland.   During this period his leadership skills again were drawn upon in the formulation and establishment of the Vale Project, a massive land rehabilitation effort in eastern Oregon.  Ed’s strong dedication to doing the right thing for the land and his leadership talents frequently brought him into directing livestock grazing legal battles in the grazing area know as Sisley Creek in the Baker Oregon District Office.

While he was in the Oregon State Office Ed longed to return to be the District Manager at Boise, Idaho and in 1962 he attained that goal.  Perhaps the most significant, visible and lasting accomplishment of Ed’s long BLM career was his strong leadership role, as the Boise District Manager, in the establishment to the National Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, the most renowned area of its kind in the world.  The Secretary of the Interior, Rogers Morton, dedicated the area to the memory of Ed Booker.

Through out his career with BLM, Ed was a man of uncompromising integrity.  As a supervisor, Ed established firm principals but with a light touch. He was the ultimate example of a career public servant who earned his way up the ranks through integrity, leadership, dedication, intelligence, and to always put the public interest in the forefront of his decision-making.

The Public Lands Foundation is honored to recognize Ed Booker with the Outstanding Lifetime Service Award.

The award was made posthumously at the Foundation’s Annual Meeting in Eugene, Oregon in September, 2003.