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William O. "Bill" Pruitt Jr. was an American-born zoologist who has been termed "the father of North American boreal ecology". A noted authority on caribou, small mammals, types of snow, and the influence of snow on boreal animals, he was also a talented popular writer.
In the period 1959-1962, while working for the University of Alaska on an Atomic Energy Commission contract, he became convinced from his studies of fallout migration in the food chain that the proposed nuclear excavation Project Chariotwould be detrimental to the tundra ecosystem , and would be disastrous for the Inupiat. His criticism of the project cost him his job and the difficulty of finding another faculty position led him to believe he had been blacklisted. After temporary positions in Colorado and Oklahoma, he accepted a position at Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1965. In 1969 he relocated to the University of Manitoba where in 1973 he founded the Taiga Biological Station. After his retirement from the faculty in 1995 he continued to do research at the University as Senior Scholar and to supervise graduate students at the Taiga Research Station.
Dr. Pruitt received numerous awards and honors for his scientific contributions. In 2003 he received a citation of thanks from the Alaska legislature and an honorary doctorate from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks for his work and integrity on Project Chariot. The successful opposition to Project Chariot was impetus for formation and growth of the American environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Early life and education
William Obadiah Pruitt Jr. was born in Easton Maryland September 1, 1922 and grew up on a farm in northern Virginia. As a boy he was strongly influenced by the writings of Ernest Thompson Seton, describing himself as "levitated an inch or two above the seat" with excitement when he heard Seton lecture in person. His interest in nature observation developed early: "I would get out in the woods and spend all afternoon or all day out away from people watching critters and trying to learn about them and learning how to identify tracks and things like that."
Pruitt served in the US Army Medical Corps during World War II, and then went on to complete his Bachelor of Science at the University of Maryland in 1947, followed by a MS from the University of Michigan the next year. In 1951 Pruitt married another zoology graduate student, Erna Nauert (1926-2012), who shared his enthusiasm for fieldwork. He completed his Ph.D in Zoology at Michigan in 1952.
Early career in Alaska and Canada
Since there were no academic openings in Vertebrate Zoology in the US when Pruitt completed his doctorate, he took a postdoctoral fellowship at the George Reserve of the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. He was then offered a research position with the US Air Force Arctic Air Medical Lab at Ladd Air Force Base, Fairbanks, Alaska, studying small mammals. He took this position despite some trepidation arising from his Army experience. He and Erna traveled to Alaska by truck along the Alaska Highway. They homesteaded in central Alaska, building their own log cabin outside Fairbanks.
The Air Force maintained numerous radar stations and other facilities in remote areas of Alaska, which it supported by regular air flights. This enabled Pruitt to set up test plots in a variety of environments and return regularly to monitor them. In this period also he learned a variety of arctic wilderness skills from local trappers and hunters including dogsledding, building snow shelters, reading weather conditions, and keeping warm, that he used throughout his career and passed on to his students.
In 1957 and 1958, Dr. Pruitt worked under contract with the Canadian Wildlife Service studying caribou. Accompanied by Erna and their baby daughter, he followed the caribou migration through northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan,and the Northwest Territories, moving camp by air, dogsled or canoe. They initially stayed at an abandoned Hudson's Bay Company station at Duck Lake, Manitoba, then moved on to Stony Rapids Saskatchewan for the winter, then to Yellowknife and Fawn Lake, Northwest Territories. For part of the time at Fawn Lake, his family camped with him and Erna assisted in the research. He later described that year as the happiest of his life.
Project Chariot
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/Deaths.20091219.93217406/BDAStory/BDA/deaths
Roger Kaye interview FWS May 20, 2003 http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/cdm/ref/collection/document/id/882
http://nanna.lib.umanitoba.ca/atom/index.php/william-o-pruitt-fonds
http://passages.winnipegfreepress.com/passage-details/id-158565/
http://www.naturemanitoba.ca/sites/default/files/NatureManitobaNews-2013-MarApr.pdf Erna obit