Dale Becker grew up on a farm in western Iowa. He worked for a time with bears and big cats at the Omaha Zoological Society, where he also developed an interagency raptor rehabilitation and environmental education project. He then moved to Montana and received his B. S. and M.S. degrees in Wildlife Biology at the University of Montana, with a specialty in raptor ecology.
Dale served as the Tribal Wildlife Program Manager for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes at the Flathead Indian Reservation for 32 years, where he developed and oversaw a widely recognized wildlife management program. He specialized in program planning and wildlife policy, rare species management, highway wildlife mitigation and hydroelectric mitigation planning, tribal treaty/wildlife issues, interagency wildlife management efforts, and environmental assessment. He developed a training program for tribal students pursuing wildlife management careers and created The Wildlife Society’s Native People’s Wildlife Management Working Group. He served as a longtime Board member of the Owl Research Institute and the Mission Mountain Audubon Chapter, President of The Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society, President of the Board of The Trumpeter Swan Society, and he is a current Board Member of the Montana Wildlife Federation. Dale and his wife, Marilyn, live near Creston, Montana.