Mark W. Villers grew up in Coos Bay and has always enjoyed the outdoors—fishing, hunting, hiking, and camping. His work experience as a teenager included jobs at his dad’s printing office and a friend’s dairy farm. After graduating from Marshfield High School he started his career in carpentry, changed to timber falling by the mid-1980s, and soon advanced to cutting old growth trees, as well as working stints for Coos Fire Protective Association. By the mid-1990s biologists had realized that “stream cleaning” (removal of woody debris from streams) and other land use practices had severely damaged watersheds and their fish populations. In 1996 his company, Blue Ridge Timber Cutting, was awarded the first government (BLM) contract to pull over whole trees directly into a stream for fish habitat. Since then he has completed over 500 such contracts, including the first such projects in California and Washington (in 2013 and 2020, respectively). Mark feels that, while we may not be able to get back to the abundance of fishes in the distant past, it is very rewarding to see the uplift that has already happened and to help farmers and other land users find more environmentally- friendly ways to manage their land. It is for these reasons he has enjoyed serving on the Coos SWCD board for the past 12 years.