Bud Moore

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Full NameWilliam Robert MooreNicknameBud MooreDate of Birth1917Date of Death2010DescriptionWilliam Robert (Bud) Moore was born on October 1, 1917 in Florence, Montana. The oldest of William and Hazel Moore’s nine children, Bud Moore graduated with an eighth grade diploma from Woodman Elementary School and went to work running a long-line trap line along the Lochsa River and the Lolo Trail in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana and northeastern Idaho. While he maintained the trap line in the winter, he began working on fire crews in the summer for the United States Forest Service at the age of 16, in 1934, and picked up other seasonal jobs with the department including alternate ranger, fire dispatcher, lookout, and trail crew foreman until the United States entered World War II. Moore married Mary Jane Buckhouse in Missoula, Montana on November 27, 1941.

Initially labeled 4-F by the military because of a hand injury, Moore joined the effort to cultivate guayule for rubber production. He moved to California and worked on the guayule farms until his hand healed and he was able to enlist in the Marines in May of 1943. During his three years in the Marine Corps, Moore served mostly in the Pacific including campaigns in Peleliu, New Britain, and Okinawa. While Moore was overseas, his and Jane’s son, William Henry (Bill), was born on October 22, 1943. Bud Moore was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps in February of 1946 and remained a part of the Marine Corps Reserves until 1952.

Moore returned to Montana and the Forest Service and eventually became a ranger in the Powell District. The Powell District served the Lochsa area and was part of what he considered his “home range.” In 1950, he was promoted to District Ranger of the Powell District. Bud and Jane’s daughter, Victoria (Vicki), was born in Missoula, Montana on May 18, 1953. Moore continued to be promoted to positions of higher responsibility including Deputy Supervisor of the Lolo National Forest and Training and Safety Officer in Ogden, Utah. In 1961, he was promoted to chief of the Branch of Employee Development and Training and transferred to Washington, D.C. He moved his family to Virginia and acquired property in West Virginia (Sandy Ridge Woods) where he began instituting his ideas on land use and ecosystem management. In 1964, he was assigned to direct the National Fire Coordination Study and, at the conclusion of the study in 1966, was named the Deputy Director of the Division of Fire Control. In 1969, he was reassigned to Missoula, Montana as the Division Chief of Fire Control and Air Operations for the Forest Service Northern Region, the position from which he retired in 1974.

Bud and Jane divorced and Bud married Janet Fitzgerald on May 17, 1971. Janet had four children from a previous marriage, Joe, Nancy, Kevin, and Susan. The same year he retired from the Forest Service, 1974, the University of Montana in Missoula awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree. He and Janet also purchased property in Swan Valley, Montana (Coyote Forest) that Moore would use to further institute his conservation and ecosystem management ideas and also establish a small milling business. He maintained his interest in the wilderness around his new home, trapping and hiking along the Lochsa and Clark Fork Rivers. Bud and Janet purchased another tract of land (Mattson Meadows) in Powell County, Montana, in 1976. In 2008, Moore would use this land as part of an exchange to acquire 210 acres (McFarland Creek) in Mineral County, Montana with hopes of rehabilitating it to a more natural state.

Moore wrote freelance articles on wilderness, recreation, trapping, and hunting topics starting in the 1960s and was published in magazines such as the Ford Times and Deer Sportsman. In 1974, he began gathering information to write a book on his experiences and ideas concerning wilderness and the Lochsa country of western Montana and the Idaho panhandle. Initially titled Rediscovery of Earth, his book would eventually be published as The Lochsa Story: Land Ethics in the Bitterroot Mountains by Mountain Press Publishing in 1996. Moore continued with his conservation advocacy work and writing following his retirement and also booked speaking engagements on conservation, fire control, trapping, hunting, and local history topics. He supported historical and conservation groups including the Upper Swan Valley Historical Group, the Travelers Rest Preservation and Heritage Association, the Swan Ecosystem Center, and the Montana Wilderness Association. His outreach work and affinity for storytelling put him in contact with many important writing and conservation figures in Montana including Norman Maclean, Arnold Bolle, Stewart Brandborg, and Doris Milner. He kept his property and home at Coyote Forest open to visitors and used it as a tool to teach people about responsible forest management and wilderness conservation.

Janet Moore passed away on April 7, 2001. Bud Moore was diagnosed with a sarcoma malignancy in February 2010; he passed away on November 26, 2010.

(Biographical note courtesy of Kellyn Younggren, University of Montana--Missoula. Mansfield Library)Contributing InstitutionUniversity of Montana Mansfield Library

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