MISSOULA – Conservationist John Craighead, who will be forever linked to America’s wild rivers and a seminal study of grizzly bears, has died. He was 100.
Craighead, who had been ailing for years, died in his sleep at his Missoula home Sunday, according to his son Johnny.
The Missoulian reports that upon arriving at the University of Montana in 1958, Craighead founded the Craighead Wildlife-Wildlands Institute and helped establish the university’s wildlife biology program over the next 25 years.
He and his twin brother Frank began their work in wildlife research in Wyoming and Montana in the 1940s and wrote much of the text for the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act that was passed in 1965. They also conducted a 12-year study of grizzly bears in Yellowstone that’s credited with helping save the bears from extinction.
Frank Craighead died in 1987.