Fritz L. Knopf, 1945–2015

Abstract

He was tall and slim, and many of us remember him in his iconic cowboy hat and boots, leaning against a pickup truck out in the grasslands. Dr. Fritz L. Knopf, senior research wildlife biologist (retired) with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the Fort Collins Science Center, contributed as much as anyone to our knowledge of the natural history and ecology of the Great Plains, its endemic birds, and the conservation of this threatened landscape. Fritz passed away on October 22, 2015, after battling a brain tumor. Fritz’s long research career was focused largely on understanding how biophysical changes in landscapes influence migratory bird systems, and on ways to translate that research into conservation management and policy. He accomplished this by actively engaging with academics, resource managers, and landowners. His collaborations were distinguished by a mutual trust and respect for people, native bird populations, and the landscapes they share. He attributed his ability to work with and gain the trust of landowners (primarily ranchers on the Great Plains) to his childhood on a dairy farm in northeastern Ohio, where he ‘‘actually liked cows.’’ He understood the utility of coming to the conversations without a preconceived negative opinion about the effects of cattle and grazing. Having come to his career during the era when natural history was still an important component of resource management and conservation science, Fritz was fascinated by western history and the history of natural resource conservation. He was quick to relate stories of how the histories of George Bird Grinnell, Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, John Kirk Townsend, and Kit Carson shaped current western landscapes relevant to his research. In high school Fritz’s passion was baseball, and he was the starting varsity pitcher in his freshman year. In 1967 he received his undergraduate degree in biology from Hiram College in Ohio, where his mentor, James Barrow, aroused his interest in behavioral ecology. He ‘‘took every biology course they had,’’ but his favorite college course was on the Romantic poets, whose expressions of the spirit of the landscape spoke to him. Although his initial plan was to become a veterinary student, he decided that he ‘‘didn’t like the idea of the inside of an animal as much as the outside of an animal.’’ After college he moved west to Utah State University to work with David Balph, a former student of Dr. Barrow, on the behavioral ecology of Uinta ground squirrels. It was during this time that he came to love the Rocky Mountain region, where he was to spend the rest of his life and most of his research focus. In 1969, in the midst of his master’s program, he was drafted into the military. He spent time at Fort Ord, California, and at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts, before being discharged in 1970. He returned to Utah State, where he finished his M.S. in wildlife science in 1973. His research on colonial-nesting American White Pelicans on the Great Salt Lake earned him his Ph.D. in wildlife ecology from Utah State in 1975. Fritz began his career as an instructor in the departments of Wildlife Science and Instructional Development at Utah State (1975–1976) while continuing work on