The
nation lost two legendary river advocates in October. Frank Craighead was one
of the principal architects of the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act. James Phillips
was a clean water warrior known as "the Fox."
Frank Craighead
Frank Craighead, 85, died on October 21. Along with his brother John, Frank was
a\ principal architect of the Wild & Scenic
Rivers Act, signed into law in 1968. At that time, most
of the preservation work in the United States was focused on wilderness areas.
Often, the lands in question were at high elevations and were without
rivers. The Craighead brothers saw the
need to create a national river preservation system to ensure rivers got the
attention they deserved. The brothers also believed a national river preservation
system would allow conservationists to act on the offensive, rather than always
playing defense, fighting dams and other harmful water projects. According to Tim Palmer’s The Wild and
Scenic Rivers of America, the Craighead brothers made films
on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in which they first publicized the term
“wild river.”
Frank, writing in Naturalist
magazine in the 1950s, described a river classification system including wild, semiwild, semiharnessed,
and harnessed. He believed that if rivers were thus categorized,
people would realize the scarcity of healthy streams.
The brothers were also renowned grizzly bear researchers. Frank
was a scientist who pioneered the first comprehensive field studies of the
bear. At a time when the animal was seen only as a threat and a nuisance,
the Craigheads championed the bear and showed through detailed scientific
research the importance of the grizzly in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Steve Hymon of the Los
Angeles Times writes that the brothers “were the first to scientifically
describe grizzlies' diet, mating habits and use of different habitats. They
invented the radio collar, a device that revolutionized the study of hundreds
of species.” The Associated Press noted that
many credit the Craighead brothers with inspiring a generation of wildlife
biologists and for bringing the notion of conservation into the American living
room. Frank Craighead is survived two sons, Charlie and
Lance, and daughter, Jana Smith; his second wife, Shirley, and his brother,
John.
James F. Phillips
James F. Phillips, 70, died on October 3. An environmental advocate known as
“the Fox,” he used flamboyant (and often illegal) tactics to heighten
visibility and get polluters to clean up their acts. James worked as a middle school teacher. In the late 1960's,
reports Douglas Martin of the New York Times, he was distressed to see dead
ducks on the polluted Fox River, which meanders through Aurora, Illinois to the
Illinois River.
He decided to take
direct action: He stopped up a sewer pipe that was spewing sudsy wastes into
the Fox River with plywood.
"Nobody ever stuck up for that poor, mistreated stream,"
he told Newsweek. "So I decided to do something in its name." James also was known to put metal
caps on top of belching smoke stacks, leaving a note signed “the Fox.” He
also plugged polluting sewer outlets and left skunks on the doorsteps of
the executives who owned them. And once, after a company spewed sewage into
Lake Michigan, Phillips collected 50 pounds of the mess and dumped it in the
company's reception room. "I got tired of watching the smoke and the filth and the
little streams dying one by one," he said in an interview with Time
magazine in October 1970. "Finally, I decided to do something - the courts
weren't doing anything to these polluters except granting continuance after
continuance."
Of course, much of what “the Fox” did was against the law, but
police could never catch him. As Martin’s New York Times obituary notes, “At least one
government official suggested that the Fox was performing a valuable service.”
The official, David Dominick, commissioner of the federal Water Quality
Administration, said in a speech before the American Society of Civil Engineers
in 1970, "The Fox, by his deeds, challenges us all with the question: Do
we, as individuals in a technological society, have the will to control and
prevent the degradation of our environment."
James got the chance to do conservation work legally when he
became a field inspector for the Kane County Environmental Department west of
Chicago. He retired in 1986 to start the Fox River Conservation Foundation. His
passion for the environment persists in a local group named for him, Friends of
the Fox.
He is survived by
two brothers, Herb, of Chicago, and Albert, of Verokua, Wis.; and two sisters,
Dorothy Spring of Aurora and Margaret Webb of Fayetteville, Ark.