Legendary conservationist John Craighead dead at 100

First Chuck Jonkel, now John Craighead . . .

John Craighead liked to quote fellow legendary conservationist Aldo Leopold, who once said “we should think like a mountain.”

The philosophy of following nature’s cues and looking “at the fundamentals of things” guided Craighead’s pioneering work in American conservation, its wild rivers and seminal studies of grizzly bears.

“I have listened to the voice of the mountain for most of my life,” said Craighead upon receiving The Wildlife Society’s Aldo Leopold Memorial Award in 1998.

The mountains still talk, but they lost one of their most avid listeners Sunday morning when John Craighead died in his sleep at his home of more than 60 years in southwest Missoula.

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