Clarence Cottam

Clarence Cottam (January 1, 1899 – March 30, 1974) was an American conservationist, civil service employee in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and inaugural director of the Welder Wildlife Foundation. (Although Clarence Cottam had no middle name, editors of his publications sometimes cited his name as "C.) M. Cottam". For two years from 1920 to 1922 he served in the central United States as a missionary for the LDS Church. From 1922 to 1925 he was a school principal in Alamo, Nevada, where his wife Margarey also taught. In 1925 he matriculated at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he graduated in 1926 with a B.S. degree in zoology and entomology and in 1927 with an M.S. At BYU he was an instructor from 1926 to 1929.

In 1929 Cottam became a junior biologist with the U.S. Division of Biological Survey in Washington, D.C. In 1934 the Division of Biological Survey was reorganized as the Bureau of Biological Survey. Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, the bureau's director, gave Cottam much of the responsibility for duck hunting regulations. During the early years of his federal government career, he was also a part-time student at George Washington University, where he graduated in 1936 with a Ph.D. In 1939, the Bureau of Biological Survey was removed from the U. S. Department of Agriculture and assigned to the U. S. Department of the Interior. In 1940, the Bureau of Biological Survey and the Bureau of Fisheries were combined to form the U. S. Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service. In the Fish and Wildlife Service, Cottam was from 1940 to 1942 a senior biologist in charge of food habits and from 1942 to 1944 was in charge of economic wildlife investigations in the Division of Wildlife Research. From 1944 to 1946 he was the chief of the Division of Wildlife Research. For the Fish and Wildlife Service he served as assistant director briefly in 1944 and again as assistant director from 1946 to 1954, when he retired from federal government service.

In 1943 Cottam at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service was responsible for promoting Rachel Carson from junior aquatic biologist to aquatic biologist. He worked with her until 1952, when she retired from government service to write full time, and remained a close friend until she died in 1964. He provided her with valuable documentation on existing DDT research. In her 1962 book Silent Spring, she cited his investigations of the harmful effects of insecticides.

For the academic year 1954–1955 Cottam returned to BYU as a professor of biology and dean of the College of Biological and Agricultural Sciences and then went on leave of absence from 1955 to 1958, when he resigned from BYU. In 1955 Cottam became the director of the Welder Wildlife Foundation (the institution managing the Welder Wildlife Refuge) Cottam was the author or coauthor of about 250 scientific papers. He received in 1955 the Aldo Leopold Memorial Award of The Wildlife Society (TWS) and in 1961 the Audubon Medal of the National Audubon Society. and the Paul Bartsch Award of the Audubon Naturalist Society.

Selected publications Articles (See limpkin.)

Books and monographs Whitewings, USGS Publications Warehouse