A touching article about the passing of a passionate Florida scientist.
Dave was a gung-ho wildlife biologist, and he was always tracking something. I’d met him more than 20 years earlier, when he was catching panthers in the Everglades and collaring them with radio transmitters.
Now Dave was doing the same thing with Florida black bears, mapping their movements with the goal of protecting the species by preserving its native territory.
He’d bait the traps with doughnuts, which bears evidently cannot resist. He e-mailed photos of a young male that had figured out how to pilfer the pastries without tripping the trap. Dave admired the animal’s ingenuity, but he was determined to outwit him.
I couldn’t join Dave on that trip, so I didn’t get a chance to speak with him again. He died on June 20 in a plane crash near Lake Placid. He was only 52.
