By Janet Raloff
William Temple Hornaday may have been a small man, but there was nothing diminutive about the naturalist’s ego, bravery, energy or ambition. Born a few years before the U.S. Civil War, the tenacious naturalist accomplished so much in his 82 years that Bechtel’s biography of him reads like larger-than-life fiction. Yet few will recognize Hornaday’s name.
He was almost solely responsible for bringing the American buffalo back from the brink of extinction and played a crucial role in saving Alaskan fur seals from a similar fate.