Bobbie Holaday

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bobbie Holaday has been credited with spearheading the citizen effort behind the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Arizona Game and Fish Department program to reintroduce the endangered Mexican wolf to the Blue Range Area of Arizona and New Mexico. In 1988, she founded Preserve Arizona's Wolves (P.A.WS.), a citizen wolf advocate group that wrote letters to agencies and Congressmen, lobbied for an increased appropriation for Mexican wolf recovery in Washington, D. C., attended public agency hearings, promoted wolf educational programs, and raised funds to enable wolf recovery activities. After eleven years, her dedicated efforts were rewarded when she helped carry and open up one of three crates holding Mexican wolves in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area.

Long a wilderness advocate, Holaday was responsible for two major wilderness designations in Arizona, the Hells Gate Wilderness and the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness.

The author, now in her nineties, received her undergraduate degree in English from Denison University, Granville, Ohio in 1944, and later completed many graduate courses at Arizona State University. During World War II, the author joined the U.S. Navy WAVEs and served as a Pharmacist Mate in a Naval Hospital, caring for returning veterans injured in the South Pacific. Following the birth of two daughters, she found employment with several large corporations including General Electric Company that later sold its computer plants to Honeywell, Incorporated. During her twenty-eight years with GE and Honeywell, she worked as both a technical writer and a systems analyst of computer software.

In addition her technical writing experience, the author wrote and edited PAW PRINTS, P.A.WS.' quarterly newsletter and had wolf articles published in WOLF! Magazine, The Howler, magazine of the Wolf Society of Great Britain, and the Canyon Echo, newsletter for the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club. She has written articles on the wolf for The Arizona Republic, the Tribune Newspapers, and the Sierra Vista Herald. In 1985, she self-published a small volume of poetry titled: Wild Places. After the Mexican wolves were released to the wild in 1998, she wrote a book narrating the story of how she worked to see this endangered species returned the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area in Arizona. The book, titled: The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf: Back to the Blue, was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2003. The author later wrote a children's story titled "The Poster Wolf "that tells the true adventures of one of the released Mexican wolves. The story appeared in International Wolf in 2005.

The author's awards include the 1994 Volunteer Service Award from the Arizona Heritage Alliance, the Arizona Game and Fish Commission's 1995 Environmentalist of the Year Award, the 1995 Arizona Cactus-Pine Girl Scout Council World of Outdoors Award, the 1998 Defender's of Wildlife's Conservation Award for Excellence, the 2001 Sierra Club Award of Appreciation for Outstanding Achievement and 25-year membership award. Her most coveted award was the prestigious "Who Speaks for Wolf" award, presented by David Mech, founder of the International Wolf Center, at the Center's Colorado Springs conference in October of 2005. In February of 2010 she was awarded a certificate and medal for outstanding achievement in wildlife conservation from the American Daughters of the Revolution. Her bio is included in the Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America and Who's Who of American Women.