21/08/2022
I just learned that Bear Man, Dave Graber died. So many wonderful talks, moments shared, and parties enjoyed. This is a loving tribute by Jordan Fisher:
Just before 10:00 last night, David Graber, the Park Service scientist who made the first modern study of bears in Yosemite in my book Engineering Eden, died suddenly at home in Three Rivers, California, just outside the west side of Sequoia National Park.
He was a good friend.
In the early 1970s Dave had dropped out of college. He took a tramp steamer to travel in Africa, during which he walked into a brushfire war and hid in a church basement for several days. On his return he was living at Venice Beach, teaching environmental education to schoolchildren, and writing book reviews for a psychology magazine and the LA Times.
In Africa he had met a couple wildlife biologists and he thought he might want to go to graduate school to become one, so in 1973 he went to see Professor A. Starker Leopold at UC Berkeley, one of the greatest minds in the field. Leopold recognized in Graber a restless intelligence, if not a great grade point average. Working his way through finishing his undergraduate degree and entering graduate school, he worked as a part-time journalist for Newsweek, a nurseryman, and a commentator on a PBS television news program.
At the time there was big trouble between bears in the Sierra Nevada and the millions of tourists visiting the national parks. It was mayhem. Hundreds of cars had been broken into by bears looking for ice chests full of food, dozens of people were roughed up or mauled, and 22 dead bears had just been found at the bottom of a cliff, where frustrated rangers had thrown them after capturing them. Leopold sent Graber to do a study.
Graber conducted an ambitious study of hundreds of Yosemite bears, finishing a PhD in ecology under Leopold. He devised a solution to the safe storage of good by inventing the food storage boxes that are in every campground today. He went on to be the Park Service's chief scientist for the Pacific-West Region, a role in which he worked closely with other scientists and rangers to preserve endangered species and national parks.
After retirement Graber suffered many health problems, but he was lucky in certain ways. His second wife was someone with whom he shared the deepest and strongest bonds possible, and he was privileged to live a life of public service in the conservation of nature.
I miss him already.
