EDWIN PHILIP PISTER
1929 – 2023
Edwin Philip (Phil) Pister, a retired aquatic biologist with California Department of Fish and Wildlife, died on January 17 in Bishop. He was 94. Phil devoted more than 70 years to saving from destruction arid land ecosystems and their component organisms. In retirement, he lectured to classes and groups in many venues, wrote extensively on environmental ethics and other topics, and directed the administrative affairs of the Desert Fishes Council, an international and interdisciplinary organization of approximately 550 governmental and academic researchers and conservation biologists dedicated to the preservation of North America’s desert aquatic ecosystems and their associated biotas. He was often referred to as the “father of native fish restoration in America.”
In addition to his extensive professional and academic responsibilities, Phil engaged in a broad variety of educational and community activities in Bishop, the Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra, including multiple terms as chairman and member of the Board of Trustees, Bishop Union Elementary School District, chairman and member of the Bishop City Planning Commission, member of the Mono Lake Committee Board of Directors, Founder and Chairman of the Inter-agency Committee on Owens Valley Land and Wildlife, and member of the Presidential Advisory Committee, White Mountain Research Station.
Phil’s immersion in California waters and fascination with aquatic wildlife began in the 1930s with summer-long family camping trips to Tuolumne Meadows where he fished in Sierra streams and hiked with his father and older brother, Karl. It continued with his education in the postwar years at UC Berkeley. He enrolled in a new major, wildlife conservation. The eminent conservationist and naturalist, A. Starker Leopold, was one of his mentors. In subsequent years, he often cited the A Sand County Almanac, written by Leopold’s father, Aldo Leopold, as a philosophical foundation of his work. Phil earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Wildlife Conservation and a Master’s degree in Zoology. His Master’s dissertation was on “The comparative limnology of lakes of the Convict Creek Basin, Mono County, California.”
In 1964, he learned that the two-inch-long pupfish, long thought to be extinct, were still surviving in Fish Slough, the last remaining wetland in Owens Valley. This discovery was the beginning of his years-long struggle to protect the Owens pupfish. He was also instrumental in a long campaign on behalf of the equally endangered Devils Hole pupfish in Death Valley National Monument, as well as in preserving the California golden trout and other native fish.
Phil’s wife of 61 years, Martha, passed away in 2013. He is survived by their two children: Anne Pister Rowley (Blaine) of Providence, UT and Karl P. Pister (Audrey) of Woodburn, OR; six grandchildren: Bryce (Anna), Heather (Scott), Stephen (Erin), Christopher (Rebecca), Audrey (Chase), and Emma; seven great-grandchildren: Cora, Dorothy, Emma, Greta, Jack, Penny, and Truman; and his dear friend and partner, Marty Voght of Bishop. His brother, Karl Stark Pister, passed away last year.
A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, May 20, 2023, at 2:00 p.m. in the Page Center at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory (SNARL) near Mammoth Lakes.