Guy Connolly Papers --

Guy Connolly was born in Minnesota in 1938 but grew up in Montana where he graduated from Billings Senior High School in 1956. In the fall of 1956 Connolly enrolled at the University of Montana to study music. Due to a family move to Denver the next year, he transferred to CU Boulder where he decided he no longer wanted to pursue a career as a classical musician. As a result of this decision, after a year in Colorado he returned to the University of Montana, where he entered the School of Forestry. This time he majored in forestry and wildlife management, graduating with a B.S. in Forest Conservation in 1961. While in college, Connolly worked two summers as a student trainee at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) National Bison Range. After graduating from the University of Montana, he was assigned to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Range Survey Crew in eastern Oregon. In 1962 he left that post to become a Staff Research Associate at the University of California’s Hopland Field Station where he studied the ecology and management of mammals, particularly black-tailed deer and coyotes.

The Hopland Field Station is a 5,000-acre former sheep ranch that is owned and operated by the University of California for sheep production research and related range-management and wildlife studies. Connolly spent 12 years at Hopland as a Staff Research Associate in Bill Longhurst’s project, “The Relations of Wildlife to Agriculture.” During his time at Hopland he earned an M.A. in Biology from California State College at Sonoma. He also played principal French horn in the Santa Rosa Symphony.

Connolly left the University of California in 1975 to join the USFWS Denver Wildlife Research Center, Predator Section, at Twin Falls, Idaho. He worked there from 1975 to 1989, with the exception of one year spent in Washington D.C.

Connolly joined the ADC program at a time when coyote research was a prominent field of study for wildlife biologists. Coyote research had been stimulated by President Nixon’s 1972 ban on predacides. Subsequent political backlash to the ban generated ample funding for predator and livestock-related research, particularly for research on coyote predation of sheep and goats. At the Twin Falls field station Connolly was project leader for Depredation Control Methods, and his research dealt mainly with the development and testing of new ways to deal with predation on livestock. His first assignment in Idaho was to take over ongoing work on the Livestock Protection Collar, but he also worked on the M-44 sodium cyanide ejector. Because of the years of effort and negotiation required to acquire EPA registration for the Livestock Protection Collar, combined with the fact that the M-44 was already registered, much of his effort in Twin Falls was directed toward improving M-44 effectiveness.

In 1985 Connolly was transferred to USFWS headquarters in Washington D.C. He arrived in time to help with the ADC program transfer from the Department of Interior to the Department of Agriculture. In D.C., Connolly became one of four initial staff officers in the APHIS ADC National Technical Support Staff. During his time in D.C. he actively participated in negotiations with the EPA on pesticide registrations and experimental use permits. In the 1980s and 1990s Connolly testified at numerous public hearings on EPA registrations and led the research team that ultimately acquired EPA registration for the Compound 1080 Livestock Protection Collar.

With the exception of the year spent in D.C., Connolly was stationed at Twin Falls for 14 years before moving to the Denver Wildlife Research Center in 1989. He worked on the Programmatic Animal Damage Control Environmental Impact Statement from 1987 until it was completed in 1994. He also represented research on the ADC program’s Management Information System Working Group and briefly supervised the Pocatello Supply Depot. As a liaison officer for the DWRC, Connolly made a concerted effort to facilitate communications between ADC research and operations. Throughout his career Connolly never perceived a sharp distinction between research and management. As a result, he worked to get the two branches of the ADC program to view themselves as integral parts of a larger program.

Connolly authored or coauthored dozens of technical articles related to wildlife management and animal damage control. He has been recognized nationally as a spokesman for effective predator management, both to protect livestock as well as to protect vulnerable wildlife species. His reports on predator control have contributed to the acknowledgement among wildlife managers that controlling predators is often necessary to safeguard other species. In addition, his studies concerning coyote behavior have helped to educate the public about the need to manage coyote predation. In 1987 he received the National Growers Association Camp Tender Award in recognition of his contributions to the U.S. sheep industry. And in 1998, Connolly was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jack Berryman Institute for Wildlife Damage Management at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

Throughout his career Connolly was an avid photographer, photographing much of his field work. Many of his photographs of coyotes attacking sheep have been published in books and national magazines.

Connolly retired from the NWRC in 1997 but continued to work into retirement. He conducted livestock protection collar and M-44 training courses for various state programs, including California, Idaho, Oregon, and Nebraska. He also wrote two substantial review papers, one on the history of sodium cyanide ejectors (the M-44 and its predecessor the Coyote-getter) and another on the Development of Compound 1080 for Coyote Control. They were published in 2002 and 2004.