Robert J. Behnke was born in Stamford, Connecticut on December 30, 1929. He attended high school in Stamford and early developed a keen interest in fishing and nature. In 1952 Behnke was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in Japan and Korea until 1954 when he returned to the United States and enrolled in the University of Connecticut. He earned a bachelor's degree in zoology in 1957 with an honors distinction for a published paper on the freshwater fishes of Connecticut. Behnke next attended the University of California, Berkeley where he earned a zoology master's degree in 1960 with a research thesis on trouts of the Great Basins. He continued on at UC Berkeley to earn his PhD in 1965, writing a dissertation of the systematics of family Salmonidae. Behnke's post graduate career took him and his wife to the Soviet Union where he was an American Academy of Science exchange scholar. During his ten months in the USSR, he gained a proficiency in the Russian language as he continued work on salmonid fishes and of Russian fisheries. For many years afterwards he served as a translation editor for Scripta Technica for English translations of Russian journals. When the Behnkes returned to the United States, Robert briefly taught ichthyology at the University of California and then moved to Colorado where from 1966 to 1974 he was Assistant Leader of the Colorado Cooperative Fishery Unit, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, at Colorado State University. From 1975 to 1999, Behnke was half time special professor at C.S.U. teaching fisheries, aquatic biology and conservation courses, developing the university's first course in conservation biology. He also has served in a variety of consulting and advising jobs and served on numerous panels and committees for state and federal agencies. Behnke once wrote on his life's research work by reflecting that his "career covers the period of the transition from the strictly anthropocentric, utilitarian based management of natural resources to a more ecocentric, holistic ecosystem form of management based on Aldo Leopold's land ethic. My work and publications over a 40 year period reflect this transition." Behnke's publications include: Trout and Salmon of North America (New York: Free Press, 2002); Native Trout of Western North America (Bethesda, Md.: American Fisheries Society, 1992) Monograph of the native trouts of the genus Salmo of Western North America (Written under contract for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1979); "Wild trout fisheries and hatchery programs for the future." In Proceedings of the American Fishery Society Symposium, Reno, Nevada, January 1982; Endangered and threatened fishes of the Upper Colorado River Basin. Colorado State
From the guide to the The Robert J. Behnke Papers, 1957-2000, (Montana State University-Bozeman Library, Merrill G Burlingame Special Collections)
