Frank craighead biography wikipedia

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Rangers and others killed bears in droves.

With the population in freefall, the grizzly bear in Yellowstone and elsewhere in the lower 48 states was listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1975 – in what was, and still is, just the last 3% of their former habitat (link).

The population’s health slowly improved with ESA protections.

Meanwhile, Frank and John went on to write and publish their research findings in scientific and popular venues, conduct ground breaking computer-based wildlife population modelling, and pioneer satellite radio-tracking techniques. They also became leading lights of wildlife research and conservation nationally and internationally.

It was obvious that this had to change, but questions arose about what approach to take.

Frank and John advocated a slow weaning process due to the vulnerability of the population. Meanwhile, two traits embodied by the Craigheads seem more vital than ever before: a fundamental curiosity about how the world works, and the courage to speak about what is morally right and in the broader public interest. 

It is sadly ironic that the moral courage for which the Craigheads are remembered supplied the government with its excuse to terminate their research in Yellowstone Park.

Sport hunting was eliminated, strict food storage requirements on public lands were adopted, public education was instituted, and domestic sheep allotments were retired. Never ever take the public lands for granted, and never let a well-heeled, exploitative minority dictate the terms of management. 

John and coauthors Jay Sumner and John Mitchell emphasized in their 1998 tome, The Grizzlies of Yellowstone, that protection of grizzly bears and other sensitive species is “severely threatened by the way in which our public land resources are manipulated by political forces...

It was one long adventure story, delivered in quiet understatement.

Frank shared a sense of discovery even about the space age technology that he and his brother deployed.

I could see the spirit of adventure, the desire for thrills, an appetite for daring."

I got to know Frank before John, because he lived in Jackson full time -- in fact, just down the road in Moose. Between 1937 and 1976, they wrote a total of 14 articles for the magazine. The dissertation was titled “Hawks, Owls and Wildlife.” During this time, they researched wildlife in Wyoming and Montana, writing Cloud Gardens in the Tetons in 1948 and Wildlife Adventuring in Jackson Hole in 1956.

In 1959 their careers merged again, this time to begin a 12-year study of grizzly bears in Yellowstone since the animals were considered threatened by increased human activity.

The brothers returned home in 1942, as they missed home and their falconry studies in America.  By then, the brothers and their assistants had performed nearly 9,000 person-days of research, hiked over 162,000 miles, and captured, marked, and studied 256 Yellowstone grizzlies.

As most know by now, what happened next proved to be catastrophic to Yellowstone’s grizzly bears.

Frank and John Craighead. They also became deeply opposed to killing animals after participating in Indian hunts during their stay. Management should be coordinated among agencies in the three states of the GYE. We needed to talk to each other, and learn better ways to coexist and solve collective problems. Needless-to-say, the term stuck.

If we were going to save bears and sustain ourselves, Frank and John argued, we need a different management framework.

The Craighead institute has offices in both Bozeman and Moose and is run by Frank’s son Lance. John was pretty hard of hearing by then, but he could still hold forth on this topic with passion and a twinkle in his eye. In the 1940s, both brothers received two degrees from the University of Michigan: their Masters of Science degrees, as well as their Ph.D.s in wildlife management, in 1949.

After 1976, their work was mostly confined to field guides and educating the public about environmentalism. Learning about one aspect of nature would connect to a lesson about the whole ecosystem.  In the course of their research, they opened our eyes to the complex relationships between the Great Bear and its habitat – habitat that was shrinking as the nation’s appetite for wood, oil and other natural resources increased.