Idaho loses a cattleman, character, conservationist with the death of Bud Purdy
Leonard "Bud" Purdy ensured that the famed Silver Creek was clear, productive
BY ROCKY BARKER April 16, 2014
Leonard "Bud" Purdy, one of Idaho's most beloved and respected ranchers, died Monday at his home.
Purdy, 96, hunted ducks and skied with Ernest Hemingway. He hosted Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper at his Picabo Ranch. He led the ranching industry into rest- and-rotation grazing, a system of moving livestock on and off public grazing lands that protected the range and improved cattle production.
He helped start the Idaho Cattle Association, led the University of Idaho Foundation as president, and was chairman of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry. In addition to the ranch, he and his late wife, Ruth, owned the Picabo Store, Picabo Elevator, and Silver Creek Supply, a seed business.
"Bud Purdy was the very embodiment of the Code of the West - someone whose life was a lesson in cowboy ethics, common sense, stewardship, and the value of hard work and perseverance," said Gov. Butch Otter. "I don't know whether Bud was a religious man, but there was nobody with as much faith in his fellow man."
Purdy donated a 3,500-acre conservation easement along Silver Creek in the 1990s to the Nature Conservancy, adjacent to its own Silver Creek Preserve. The easement protected the creek and its environs from future development.
Silver Creek, one of the state's premier trout streams, attracts fly-fishermen from around the world.
Purdy didn't even take the tax break on the land easement, valued at $7 million.
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