Bolle, Arnold W.

Arnold Bolle was a leading figure in the Montana conservation movement. Arnold William Bolle was born on October 5, 1912, in Watertown, Wisconsin. He graduated from Northwestern College with a liberal arts degree. He received his bachelor’s degree in forestry at The University of Montana in 1937. He served as assistant ranger on the Deerlodge Forest and went to work for the Soil Conservation Service in 1938, a job he held for the next eighteen years. His renowned method of working with farmers and ranchers became a model for the Soil Conservation Service.

In 1954, Bolle took a fellowship at the Public Administration School at Harvard University. He returned to Montana in 1954 and became a professor in the School of Forestry. He returned to Harvard in 1958 and earned his Ph.D. in public administration. He became dean of the School of Forestry at the University of Montana in 1962. He retired as dean in 1964 and continued teaching as a professor until his retirement in 1978.

Professor Bolle and six of his colleagues at The University of Montana documented clearcutting practices in the Bitterroot National Forest, at the request of United States Senator Lee Metcalf of Montana. Their report was entitled, A University View of the Forest Service, but it was popularly called the “Bolle Report.” It was published as a Senate document in 1970 and thousands of copies were distributed. The report launched a national forest land management controversy and contributed to the passage of the National Forest Management Act of 1976.

During his retirement years, Bolle served on boards and committees of many local and national environmental organizations. He served on the governing council of the Wilderness Society until his death. He was also active in the Montana Wilderness Association and the Forever Wild Endowment. He was honored nationally with the Bolle Center for Ecosystem Management, a segment of The Wilderness Society in Washington, D.C. He also received The Wilderness Society’s highest honor, the Robert Marshall Award, in 1993. The University of Montana Bolle Center for People and Forests was named for Bolle that same year. The center is an independent, service-oriented natural resource learning center dedicated to Bolle’s philosophy of ecosystem management and sustainable forests.

Bolle died on March 18, 1994.