Herman William Gabriel Iii

HAMILTON — H. William “Bill” Gabriel III, a resident of Florence, passed away on April 7, 2020 after a long life spent in wild places.

Bill began studying birds as a Boy Scout and went on to win a Virginia Academy of Science scholarship in 1952 to Virginia Tech where he earned a BS in forest & wildlife conservation. He spent summers fighting forest fires in California and joined the US Army Reserve in 1956. He served in Colorado in the U.S. Army Mountain & Cold Weather Training Command, where he trained soldiers in skiing, rock climbing, and other mountain assault skills, and finished his Army commitment at Fort Bragg as an Army forester.

After the Army, Bill went to work as a forester with the United States Forest Service in the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains, where he became an expert in mapping, describing, and inventorying forest stands. This led to a year in Ecuador with the United Nations to inventory and map a rainforest wilderness twice the size of Yellowstone National Park. There, from dugout canoes, he cataloged some 500 tree species that were until then unidentified.

Returning to the states, he earned a PhD in wildlife biology at the University of Montana and worked in Alaska on land and resource conservation issues. He helped found the Anchorage Audubon Society, and after retiring in 1985, went on to become a widely published photographer and writer. His work appeared in Audubon, Discover, Natural History, Orion, Ranger Rick, Time, U.S. News, and several dozen other magazines and textbooks. His travels took him to six continents, including Antarctica.

“I dreamed of an outdoor life somewhere in the mountains, and at some distance from civilization…In my 32 years with the U.S. Forest Service, I worked from the windblown, treeless tundra of Alaska’s Arctic coast to the steaming equatorial forests of Ecuador and loved every minute.”

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Five Valleys Audubon Society in Bill’s memory.