Ecologist and brother revealed grizzly secrets
John Craighead, an outdoorsman who along with his twin brother subdued, tagged and tracked the grizzly bears of Yellowstone National Park in a landmark study during the 1960s, revealing as never before the lives of those mighty, mysterious animals, died Sept. 18 at his home in Missoula, Mont. Hewas 100.
A son, Derek Craighead, confirmed the death and said he did not knowthe cause.
Fromthe earliest days of their boyhood, Craighead and his twin, Frank Jr., felt a pull toward nature thatwould tug at them all their lives. It took them from Washington, D.C., where they explored the banks of the Potomac Riverw ith their entomologist father, to Wyoming and Montana, where they established themselves as preeminent conservationists.
The brothers were credited with helping write the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, legislation that protects 208 rivers in 40 states and were regular contributors to National Geographic magazine.
But they were best known for their study of grizzlies begun in 1959, an initiative that sparked an angry confrontation with Yellowstone officials but that yielded a wealth of information about the park’s grizzlies at a time when they came perilously close to extinction.
The nature writer Thomas McNamee, an authority on grizzlies, has credited the Craig heads with making“possible the first penetration of human light through the ancient opacity of bear hood.” In an interview, he said that “John and Frank Craighead were the greatest pioneers of modern wildlife study by far.”
The brothers perfected techniques of tranquilizing grizzlies so that they could be outfitted with radio collars, an innovation at the time.
“Within a few years on all kinds of animals all over theworld, scientists were placing radios,” Craighead once told a publication of the University of Montana, where he taught for years.
The population of grizzlies in the area known as the Greater Yellow stone Ecosystem rebounded from 136 in 1975, when the grizzlies were designated a threatened species, to roughly 700 today, according to park estimates.
In 2007, The Washington Post described the grizzlies’ resurgence as a “direct
ripple effect” of the Craigheads’ research. The Audubon Society recognized the brothers as among the 100 most significant figures in 20th-century conservation.
After graduating from high school in 1935, the twins took a trip west, photographing hawks and falcons. “The day our ’28Chevy topped this hill in Wyoming and we spotted the Tetons, itwas like our souls got sucked right into the Rocky Mountains,” John Craighead once told an interviewer. “We knew right then and there that our calling was out West.”
They received science degrees in 1939 from Penn State. The next year, they received master’s degrees in ecology and wildlife management from the University of Michigan.
During World War II, the Craigheads created a survival course for naval aviators and wrote “How to Survive on Land and Sea.” They returned to Michigan, where both received doctorates in 1950. Soon after, John Craig head joined the University of Montana, where he led the Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit.
Frank Craighead Jr. died in 2001.