In February, I called Bob Ream for a story I was writing about Diane Boyd, a pioneering wolf researcher who Ream took under his wing in 1979. Ream didn’t answer, but minutes later I received a text, “Can’t talk now … what’s up?”
Before I could respond, Ream, having listened to my voice message, called me back. We had a nice conversation, in which he was lucid and easily remembered minute details from work he did 40 years ago. Though I knew, I couldn’t tell he was dying of pancreatic cancer.
Ream passed away on March 22 at 80. My interview was likely his last with a journalist, on the heels of a lifetime in which he offered his time to reporters as freely as he did with countless students, scientists, bureaucrats, conservationists and politicians, many of whom count him as a mentor, including Boyd, now a wolf management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Ream’s wide-ranging career defies a single label, with individual components that alone would comprise a legacy worthy of a book but, taken together, tell the story of a genuine trailblazer whose burning passions were matched by intellect, patience and versatility.
“Many of us are good at something,” Boyd told the Missoulian, “but Bob went out and had about 20 careers and did them all excellently.”
As a professor at University of Montana, Ream launched the Wolf Ecology Project in 1973 to document increasing sightings of the canid in the Northern Rockies. The program sent researchers, including Boyd, into the field to study the natural recolonization of wolves in northwestern Montana, one of the West’s most significant breakthroughs in wildlife conservation in the last half century. Under Ream’s watch, biologists established a working foundation of scientific knowledge that would inform subsequent decades of wolf research.
Also at UM, Ream founded the Wilderness Institute in 1974. Its undergraduate program in Wilderness and Civilization has enrolled more than 1,000 students. He taught wildlife biology in Missoula for 28 years altogether, including two years as interim dean of the UM College of Forestry in 1993-1994.
Ream served in the Montana House of Representatives from 1983-1997. As a legislator, he was the chief sponsor of the state’s stream access law, held up as a national example for public recreation rights. He also headed up measures establishing restitution requirements for wildlife poaching and the Montana Superfund law.
Ream then served as chair of the Montana Democratic Party from 1997-2005. Former U.S. Sen. Max Baucus remembered him as “a giant amongst Montana Democrats who reached across party lines to fight for the little guy.” Current Sen. Jon Tester said Ream was one of the first people he met with when he decided to get into public service, adding, “I am grateful for his life of leadership.”
Ream later chaired the state Fish and Game Commission from 2009-2012, punctuating a career dedicated to stewarding wildlife and the environment. He also served on the Board of the International Wolf Center and on the interagency Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Team that authored a regional management plan.
Boyd recently told me that Ream, equally comfortable in a classroom or legislative hearing as a hang glider or sailboat, mentored “thousands through patient and kind teaching, experiential outdoor trips, corny humor, passion for all things wild, calm leadership, his willingness to always try new things and live life to the fullest.”