Remembering Tom Cade

Tom Cade passed away yesterday at the age of 91. Considering his age and the state of his health, I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still having a hard time imaging a world without Tom. He was such an inspiring figure to me for so long. I first heard about him in my teens, and it was such a proud moment when I first met him and got to know him. What can you say about Tom Cade? Of course, he was a renowned biologist, a raptor conservationist, an Ivy League professor, and a lifelong falconer—but he was so much more.

Tom Cade (left) and Jim Weaver

Tom was a dynamo who poured all of his energy and leadership skills into a valiant attempt to turn around the Peregrine Falcon's perilous population decline. By the mid-1960s, most of the Peregrine eyries across the United States had been abandoned and the species was no longer breeding east of the Mississippi River. Tom strongly believed he could breed Peregrines in captivity and release them to the wild in sufficient numbers to have a massive positive impact on the dwindling falcon population.

Tom's enthusiasm was contagious. Many falconers contributed their own birds to use in the captive-breeding program at Cornell. And many of them also volunteered their time and provided initial funding for the project. No falconer could imagine losing the Peregrine Falcon. Tom and The Peregrine Fund—an organization he founded in 1970—released some 4,000 captive-produced Peregrine Falcons in the space of 28 years in what became one of the most successful endangered species recovery efforts ever attempted. I'll never forget attending the event in August 1999 at the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, when Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt officially removed the Peregrine Falcon from the Endangered Species List. What an amazing accomplishment. And what a great way to end the Twentieth Century.

Uummannaq, Greenland, 2000.                                                                       (c) Tim Gallagher

I had the great privilege the following year of accompanying Tom Cade, Bill Burnham, Kurt Burnham, and Jack Stephens on an expedition to Greenland—actually a follow-up to research conducted nearly a century earlier by Danish ornithologist Alfred Bertelsen, who had extensively mapped out numerous nest sites and breeding colonies of birds in the Uummannaq region of Greenland. When Tom was a young graduate student at UCLA in the early 1950s, he had read a paper Bertelsen had published in a Danish ornithological journal in 1921, and he decided he would someday retrace Bertelsen's route and see how much the bird numbers and species makeup had changed in the intervening years. And he did it, decades later at the age of 72—traveling countless miles up iceberg-choked fjords in an open boat; camping out on the frozen ground as frigid Arctic winds tried to rip the tents to shreds. I'm still impressed by Tom's determination and stoicism in the face of hardship. I'll always remember that. Rest in Peace, my old friend.

(Left to right) Bill Burnham, Kurt Burnham, and Tom Cade in Greenland.          (c) Tim Gallagher

Tom Cade and Kurt Burnham in Greenland.                                                  (c) Tim Gallagher

Tom Cade in a helicopter in Greenland.                               (c) Tim Gallagher

With Tom Cade in 2015 at a celebration in his honor at Cornell.

 Tom Cade and his wife Renetta at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.    (c) Tim Gallagher

Tom Cade with Phyllis Dague, who worked with him for many years.  (c) Tim Gallagher