Frank Graham Jr., Nature Writer Who Updated ‘Silent Spring,' Dies at 100

New York Times

04-06-2025

Frank Graham Jr., who wrote eloquently about the natural world and conservation for Audubon Magazine for nearly 50 years and published a book that updated Rachel Carson's groundbreaking 1962 exposé, 'Silent Spring,' which had warned about the dangers of pesticides, died on May 25 at his home in Milbridge, Maine. He was 100.
David Seideman, a former editor in chief of Audubon, the magazine published by the National Audubon Society, confirmed the death.
The subjects of Mr. Graham's writing 'ran the gamut,' Mr. Seideman said in an interview, 'from the tiniest creatures, like spiders — about which he was a self-taught expert — to giant sandhill cranes on Nebraska's Platte River. There wasn't a creature that didn't interest him.'
He added, 'I'd visit him in Maine, where he had a little island, and we'd be eating plants, and he'd also be picking spiders out of his kayak and identifying them.'
In addition to birds and insects, Mr. Graham wrote about threats to the environment. Ed Neal, the outdoors columnist for The San Francisco Examiner, described Mr. Graham's 1996 book, 'Disaster by Default: Politics and Water Pollution,' as 'a damning indictment of what industry and indifferent government have done to the nation's waterways.'
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