Carl B. Koford

Carl Buckingham Koford (born September 3, 1915 in Oakland , California , † December 3, 1979 in Berkeley , California) was an American biologist who is best known for his behavioral studies on the California condor .

Life

After graduating from Piedmont High School , Koford studied at the University of Washington and later at the University of California, Berkeley , where he received his Ph.D. received his doctorate. In March 1939 he began his field work on the California condor. For more than 400 days until June 1941, Koford observed a population of California condors and meticulously recorded their population and way of life. Served in the United States Navy during World War II. In 1946 he continued his research, which was published in 1953 in the study "The California Condor". Here Koford gave a reliable estimate of the world population for the first time, which amounted to 60 specimens in the early 1950s. In the 1950s and again in the 1970s, Koford traveled to South America and conducted studies on the vicuna , jaguar , ocelot and jaguarundi . In 1968, when rumors emerged of a surviving population of the Mexican grizzly bear , thought to have been extinct since 1964 , Koford traveled to Mexico. However, he was unable to provide evidence of the continued existence of this bear subspecies.

Honors and Dedication Names

After Koford's death in 1979, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley established the Carl B. Koford Memorial Fund , which has financially supported scientists in their field work on vertebrates since 1980. In 1970 the gecko species Phyllodactylus kofordi was named after Koford. 1989 and 1995 were followed by the Koford prairie mouse ( Akodon kofordi ) and the Koford-Punamaus ( Punomys kofordi ). In 1988, the paleontologist Steven Douglas Emslie named the fossil condor species Gymnogyps kofordi from the Old Pleistocene of Florida in honor of Koford.

Fonts

• CB Koford: The California condor. National Audubon Society, Washington, DC 1953, Research Report No. 4th
• CB Koford: The Vicuña and the Puna. In: Ecol Monogr. 27 1957, pp. 153-219.
• CB Koford: Prairie dogs, white-faces and blue gramma. In: Wildlife Monogr. 3 1958, pp. 1-78.
• CB Koford: The last of the Mexican grizzly bear. In: IUCN Bulletin. 2 1969, p. 95.
• CB Koford: Spotted Cats in Latin America: An Interim Report. In: ORYX. 12 (1) 1973, pp. 37-39, 1973a.
• CB Koford: Project 694. Status Survey of Jaguar and Ocelot in Tropical America. In: World Wildlife Yearbook 1972-1973. Pp. 215-219.8.
• CB Koford: Latin American Cats: economic values ​​and future prospects. In: The World Cats. 3 (1) 1976.

literature

• Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins: The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals . Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, p. 227.
• John Nielsen: Condor: To the Brink and Back - The Life and Times of One Giant Bird . HarperCollins Publishers, New York 2006, ISBN 0-06-008862-1 .
• Obituary: Carl B. Koford, 1915–1979. In: Condor. 82, The Cooper Ornithological Society 1980, pp. 112-115. (pdf, online; 217 kB)