Yolo County CA Obituary Project Obituaries.....LOTT , Dale  January 26 2004
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Peggy B. Perazzo pbperazzo@comcast.net July 3, 2004, 1:16 am

"The Davis Enterprise," Tuesday, February 3, 2004
Dale Lott

UC Davis professor emeritus Dale Lott, a sage counselor to his colleagues and an
irrepressible travel guide to his friends, died Jan. 26, 2004. He was 70 years old.

Lott's death, from longstanding pulmonary fibrosis only recently diagnosed, was
unexpected. Just last September, he led his friends on a canoe trip tracing
Lewis and Clark's route on the Upper Missouri River. Most recently, he had been
working on plans for a newly forming prairie-based wildlife reserve in western
Montana as well as a book about that project.

Although he wrote numerous papers and a scholarly book on animal behavior in his
30 years at UC Davis, he waited until he retired in 1994 to write a nonfiction
book for general audiences about bison, his lifelong interest, and the settling
of the American West.

Writing "American Bison" was "my gift to myself in retirement," Lott told his
wife, Laura. It was published in 2002 by the University of California Press and
was well received. "In this rich and enthusiastic narrative, Lott uses exuberant
humor and great passion for his subject. ... The scenes he sketches ... bring
his story to life," wrote a book reviewer in the Los Angeles Times.

In characteristic fashion, said longtime colleague Peter Moyle, Lott prepared
thoroughly for writing the bison book - in this instance, by taking UC Extension
courses in nonfiction writing and working with a group of other writers.

"The study of bison behavior was his true love and his true academic calling,"
said his close friend and colleague Ben Hart. In fact, Lott was born on the
National Bison Range. His grandfather was range superintendent and his father
worked there. From childhood Lott was immersed in the observation of bison and
the history and literature of the pioneers.

Another close friend and colleague, Don Owings, said, "Bison are a theme of not
only Dale's professional life but his personal life as well. He drew from
talents he had developed in both and wrote a beautiful book."

Lott's decades of studying animal behavior and social organization took him
around the world. Besides his bison research, he investigated animal behavior
before earthquakes and interactions between nomadic herdsman and their cattle in
Kenya, and was one of the first scientists to study the possible impact of
tourists on wildlife.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, Lott asked people why they fed the sheep potato
chips, even though it was not good for them. "They said that it made them feel
like they were better people because the animals trusted them enough to take
food from their hands," Hart recalled.

In Nepal, Lott showed that technologically well-equipped tourists - those with
cameras with telephoto lenses - were content to watch Asian rhinoceroses from
afar. Tourists with simpler cameras pushed their Nepalese guides to take them
closer to the rhinos, which sometimes forced the animals to stop grazing and
take refuge in the forest.

As he traveled, Lott developed a talent for organizing and leading research
trips and vacation adventures. He took colleagues and friends to every
continent, including Antarctica. In California he led camping and backpacking
trips to Mount Whitney, the Lost Coast, Joshua Tree National Park and Death
Valley. ("And we walked around the UC Davis Arboretum maybe a thousand times,"
Owings said.)

For his 60th birthday, Lott planned a 60-mile hike with friends across the
Vizcaino Desert in Baja California.

"It was a mystical trip," Owings recalled. "We slept among these great yuccas in
the sand dunes and once we woke up - in that dry desert - totally socked in by
fog. We saw an endangered subspecies of pronghorn antelope.

"Dale always made things like that happen."

An accomplished pilot, Lott often flew colleagues to research sites. "He was so
thorough as a flyer," Moyle recalled. "He seemed to check everything twice. I
never knew anyone who was so cautious."

That maturity served the university many times over the years, Moyle said,
especially when Lott was the founding chairman of the department of wildlife,
fish and conservation biology. He served as chairman for six years, from 1973 to
1979.

"Dale was the godfather of our department and served as a mentor for all of us,"
said the current department chair, Dirk Van Vuren.

"Though he wasn't that much older, he was the grown-up among all us academic
children," Moyle said. "He liked people, liked making sure things worked out. We
had some pretty contentious people in the new department but he made sure we got
along."

Lott helped found the Animal Behavior Graduate Group at UC Davis, which has
become the largest body of faculty working in animal behavior at any campus in
the world.

He was a leader in another forum, too: He was one of the earliest advocates for
bicycle traffic lanes and paths in Davis, with his first wife, Donna. This
remained a strong interest for Dale, and he wrote an opinion article on the
topic in September for The Davis Enterprise.

Dale and Donna Lott had one son, Terence, who owns the Newsbeat stores in Davis
and Sacramento. Dale Lott met Laura Kim Bell at a course in Sacramento, and they
were married in 1990.

"The thing I'll miss most about Dale is having his presence as one of these
individuals you thoroughly enjoy talking to," Moyle concluded. "He was wise.
Every time you talked to him you learned something."

Dale Lott is survived by his wife, Laura K. Lott, of Davis; a son and
daughter-in-law, Terence and Janis Lott of Davis; a brother and sister-in-law,
Robert and Sue Campbell of Spokane, Wash.; an aunt, Maizie Hermann of Spokane;
and his former wife, Donna Lott of Davis.

His family and friends will hold a memorial service at a later date.

In honor of Dale Lott's dream of establishing a fully functioning prairie
ecosystem on the American Plains that would include the reintroduction of wild
bison, his family requests that memorial contributions be made to the American
Prairie Foundation, P.O. Box 908, Bozeman, MT 59771. For more information,
e-mail Dakota@prairiefoundation.org.


Additional Comments:
Submitted with the permission of the "The Davis Enterprise," 315 G Street,
Davis, CA 95616.

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