Gary Bogue may be retiring after 42 years as wildlife columnist at the Contra Costa Times, but the man whom the New York Times once dubbed “the Ann Landers of California wildlife” isn’t disappearing from the news hole exactly. The CoCo Times and several other MediaNews Group properties in the Bay Area will continue to run “Best of Bogue” columns twice a week.
The newspaper announced the columnist’s and former Lindsey Wildlife Museum curator’s retirement today in a piece examining the impact his work has had on Bay Area wildlife preservation over the years. An excerpt:
When a feral cat ran loose at the Oakland Coliseum in the middle of an A's-Yankees game in 1990, A's manager and animal lover Tony La Russa rescued it, and made plans to take it to a shelter.
When he learned there wasn't a single no-kill facility in the East Bay, he adopted "Evie" and called Bogue with an idea.
"(Bogue) legitimized the need for a nonprofit shelter and even became our interim director for a while," says La Russa, who launched his Animal Rescue Foundation the following year. ARF will honor Bogue with a Lifetime Achievement Award on Sept. 8.
