Jennifer Emerson Belcher (née Marion; January 4, 1944 – March 31, 2022) was an American politician who was the first woman to serve as Washington commissioner of public lands from 1993 to 2001.
[2] According to her sister, their father was a truck driver for Kroger and a member of the Teamsters, even serving as president of his local union, and their mother was a homemaker and early adopter of recycling.
[2] She also worked on bills related to strip searches, minimum pay and farm labor standards, child abuse, and urban growth management.
Perhaps her "crowning achievement" was finalization in 1997 of a 50-year Habitat Conservation Plan under the federal Endangered Species Act, governing management of Washington's state trust lands.
Leading forest ecologist Jerry Franklin called her "a revolutionary" for changing the DNR's direction with respect to ecological conservation and species protection.