Jack Ward Thomas (September 7, 1934 – May 26, 2016) was the thirteenth chief of the U.S. Forest Service, serving during the Clinton administration years of 1993–1996. He was born in

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. Accord ...

. His undergraduate education and degree (a BS in wildlife management in 1957) was from

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

. He worked for the

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) is a Texas state agency that oversees and protects wildlife and their habitats. In addition, the agency is responsible for managing the state's parks and historical areas. Its mission is to manage ...

for ten years. Then while working as a USFS research biologist at Morgantown, West Virginia, he received an MS in wildlife ecology from

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State Coll ...

. He headed a Forest Service research unit at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He received his PhD in forestry there in 1972. In 1974, he moved to

La Grande, Oregon La Grande is a city in Union County, Oregon, United States. Originally named "Brownsville," it was forced to change its name because that name was being used for a city in Linn County. Located in the Grande Ronde Valley, the city's name comes ...

, working as the chief research wildlife biologist and program leader at the USFS Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory. On December 1, 1993, he was appointed Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. During his time as head of the USFS, the

Northwest Forest Plan The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) is a series of federal policies and guidelines governing land use on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It covers 10 million hectares within Western Oregon and Washington as wel ...

was adopted. Jack became a member of the

Boone and Crockett Club The Boone and Crockett Club is an American nonprofit organization that advocates fair chase hunting in support of habitat conservation. The club is North America's oldest wildlife and habitat conservation organization, founded in the United Sta ...

in 1994. After retiring from the Forest Service, he accepted a position as the Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation at the School of Forestry of the

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fa ...

in Missoula, Montana—a position he held until 2006 when he officially retired. He died on May 26, 2016, after a battle with cancer, at his home in Florence, Montana.

Publications

He has more than 60
publications
to his credit, including: * ''Jack Ward Thomas: The Journals of a Forest Service Chief'', edited by Harold K. Steen. UofWA Press, 2004, 417 pp. * ''North American Elk: Ecology and Management'', Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002, Thomas was co-editor. * ''Wildlife habitats in managed forests: the Blue Mountains of Oregon and Washington'', Agriculture Handbook No. 553, USDA, 1979. Thomas was editor. * ''Viability assessments and management considerations for species associated with late-successional and old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest'', USFS, 1993. * ''A Conservation Strategy for the Northern Spotted Owl'', 1990 * ''Wildlife habitats in managed rangelands: The Great Basin of southeastern Oregon : riparian zones (General technical report PNW), 1979 * ''Forks in the Trail: A Conservationist's Trek to the Pinnacles of Natural Resource Management'', Boone and Crockett Club, 2015 * ''Wilderness Journals: Wandering the High Lonesome'', Boone and Crockett Club, 2015 * ''Hunting Around the World: Fair Chase Pursuits from Backcountry Wilderness to the Scottish Highlands'', Boone and Crockett Club, 2015

References

External links

JackWardThomas.com

Boone & Crockett bio: Jack Ward Thomas

Oregon Encyclopedia

Jack Ward Thomas bio
(

Forest History Society The Forest History Society is an American non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of forest and conservation history."Forest History Society." Echo Project. Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. http://echo.gmu. ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Jack Ward United States Forest Service officials American conservationists West Virginia University alumni People from Fort Worth, Texas Texas A&M University alumni University of Montana faculty University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Natural Sciences alumni People from La Grande, Oregon 1934 births Activists from Texas 2016 deaths

Publications

See also

References

External links