From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

Don Davis, 68, died June 5 in
Colorado Springs. Born in Columbus, Ohio,
Davis was son of the Columbus Zoo director
(his father) and gorilla keeper (his mother.)
Accepted for membership by the American
Zoo Association at age 17, Davis became
director of the Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville,
Indiana, in 1955, and after establishing his
credentials, became associate director of the
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs
two years later, stepping up to director in
1962. During his tenure, which ended in
1981, he “expanded the zoo’s facilities, started
its now-famous giraffe collection, and
pushed its primate and hoofed animal collections
to world fame,” Denver Zoo executive
director Clayton Freiheit told Ovette Sampson
of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph.

Frank Awbrey, 65, died on May
31 of liver cancer. Remembered longtime colleague
Ann E. Bowles, senior staff biologist
at the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute in
San Diego, “His career in bioacoustics
spanned 42 years,” beginning with studies of
frog sounds at Texas A&M University.
Relocating to San Diego State University in
1964, and later spending 21 years with the
Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute, Awbrey
studied “acoustical measurements of sonic
booms and seal-control devices, bioacoustics
of Antarctic killer whales and leopard seals,
auditory threshholds of beluga whales, and
acoustic techniques to reduce fishery impact
on marine mammals,” Bowles remembered.
Awbrey in 1990 founded the Environmental
Trust, Bowles said, “to protect what remains
of undeveloped native habitat in the San Diego
area.” His final project, she noted, was “a
groundbreaking effort to measure the longterm
population level effects of aircraft noise on
endangered passerines (songbirds).”

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