Ian MacMillen Richard Edward MacMillen, 91, passed away on Thursday, August 3rd, 2023 at home with his wife, Barbara, in Talent, Oregon. Dick, as he was known to many throughout much of adulthood, was born in Upland, California on April 19th, 1932 to Hesper and Ruth MacMillen. After completing Claremont High School in 1950, he enrolled in Pomona College, graduating with a B.A. in Zoology in 1954. He went on to receive his M.S. from the University of Michigan (1956) and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (1961), both in Zoology. During this time (1953-1975), he was married to Ann (Gray) MacMillen, with whom he had two children, Jennifer and Douglas. Dick returned to Pomona College in 1960 to begin his career of over three decades in post-secondary education. He was promoted from Instructor to Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Zoology, winning the Wig Distinguished Professor award for excellence in teaching in 1965 and making the first of many research trips to Australia in 1966-67. In 1968, he joined the faculty of the recently founded University of California, Irvine, where he was promoted to Professor and chaired the Department of Population and Environmental Biology (1972-1974) and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (1984-1990). It was there, in 1977, that he met Barbara (Morgan) MacMillen, to whom he was married from 1980 until the end of his life, having one child, Ian, and becoming stepfather to Christopher and Stephen. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1993 but remained active in the field, coordinating and teaching in the University of California’s Multi-Campus Supercourse in Environmental Biology at the White Mountain Research Station throughout the latter half of the 1990s, volunteering with the EPA’s Star Graduate Fellowship Program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Forensics Laboratory in the 2000s, and marking fifty years of publishing in academic journals with his 2010 review in the Journal of Mammology. Dick was known for his sense of humor and his generosity, along with a good dose of stubbornness. All three served him through his many trials and adventures, from fighting the good fight for (and sometimes against) academic institutions, to scrambling through scrub and hills to find fishing holes, to dealing with old football injuries and neuropathy that troubled his mobility later in life. Much of this took place in the arid regions of the Western United States and, whenever sabbaticals came around, in Australia, where his poor luck at getting trucks stuck in outback mire sometimes earned him the uncoveted sobriquet of “bogger Dick” (plus some friendly joshing and a cold stubby of local brew) from fellow expedition members. Several such escapades, as well as his ultimately successful scientific exploits, are recorded with characteristic wit in Meanderings in the Bush: Natural History Explorations in Outback Australia (with Barbara MacMillen, CSIRO Publishing, 2009). Yet he was often out on such far-flung treks, family in tow, in service not so much of his own research as that of his many colleagues, and of a score of graduate advisees, who at times needed a hopping mouse brought back from Australia’s interior, or help mist netting bluebirds in California. He continued to travel into his 80s, returning to Australia with Barbara to see friends in 2012 and venturing to Bulgaria, Croatia, and Serbia in 2013; but toward the end, he especially relished time at home and at his and Barbara’s cabin in Idaho, where they spent most summers. It was his wish that his ashes be spread on the mound overlooking that cabin on the East Fork of the Salmon River–the destination of one final meandering. He is survived, with love, by: Spouse - Barbara Jean (Morgan) MacMillen; Children - Jennifer Kathleen (MacMillen) Brown (grandchildren - Ariel Anne Aulani Brown and Morgan Jose Kealoha Brown), Douglas Michael MacMillen (grandchild - Lukas Jesus Kawena MacMillen), Ian Richard MacMillen (Liliana Vladimirova Milkova, grandchild - Malvina Lora Rousseva-MacMillen); Stepchildren - Christopher Lawrence Burgeson (Dawn Gallo, stepgrandchild - William Mitchell Owen), Stephen Anthony Burgeson (Colleen Burgeson, stepgrandchild - Brian James Burgeson); Sister-in-Law - Marjory (Maloney) MacMillen. He was preceded in death by: Parents - Hesper Nichols MacMillen and Ruth Henrietta (Golder) MacMillen; Brother: Larry Nichols MacMillen.

Libby Robin Steve Morton interviewing Dick about his research on Sandringham cattle station in Queensland, Australia (at Australian National University in Canberra, 2012) Partial transcript: Steve Morton: “Reflect upon what drew you to Australia in that first instance….” Dick MacMillen: “I probably came here initially, uh, almost by chance. I mean, I knew the place, the continent existed somewhere way down there, but my major professor was George Bartholomew, who had spent a sabbatical leave here, I guess in the… when was he? I guess it would have been in the late 1950s, at Western Australia. And through Bart, a fair number of Australian scientists came to visit…. Tony Lee also at the time had come from his undergraduate degree at Western Australia and did his PhD with Bart at the same time I was doing mine. And then I finished my degree and had got on to work at Pomona, and Tony then first went to, I think, Queensland, but then Jock Marshall was setting up the Department of Zoology and Comparative Physiology at Monash, and he attracted Tony Lee to become a member of their faculty. And after 6 years at Pomona, I was due a sabbatical leave, so it was, uh, pretty much a natural choice for me to choose to come to Australia, and both Jock Marshall and Tony Lee invited me to come and spend the year there. And I had a Fulbright Fellowship, which didn’t hurt, uh, it helped a great deal in fact, as well as funding from the National Science Foundation. It was at a chance meeting at the Australian Mammal Society that I was introduced to Basil Marlow, who was at that time curator of mammals at the Australian Museum in Sydney, and Basil said, “Oh, well, if you're interested in small mammals, you ought to go to Sandringham, because there’re bloody mobs of them all over the place.” And so, you know, he elaborated on that a little bit and said there were murid hopping mice and many dasyurid marsupials, and that’s the place to go. At the time, I’d planned to study, uh, to follow up on some studies I’d done in the States on desert doves and pigeons, and so I decided to look at the spinifex pigeon here. And so Tony and I decided, well, let’s look at a map, and following Basil’s recommendations, we chose Southwestern Queensland, because spinifex pigeons occurred there in abundance, and also the animals that Basil had told us about. Well the, to make a long story short, I only ended up finding three spinifex pigeons, they were all over the place but I couldn’t trap them, because the lure for them in a trap was water, and it had rained everywhere, as it usually does when I come here. And I was relieved to see that it’s been raining for the last three years, so I can’t be blamed for it!”

Ian MacMillen Written and submitted by Lynn Ransford from her up coming book. Thwarting An Attack of Yellow Jackets It’s always an adventure to visit our friends Barb and Dick at their custom-built ranch house on rural acres alongside the East Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. Barb scavenged old wood from collapsed barns to build rough-hewn handsome kitchen shelving. The gigantic fireplace and chimney, constructed of quartzite from nearby rocky slopes, grew to be two stories high, dominating the living area with walls of pine logs, that looks out on meadows and woods from three sides. Barb and Dick explain that they hired a local stonemason, Mike, accompanied constantly by his dog, Ringer. “…Fred, a local log-cabin builder, was to work in concert building the log walls…. Somehow, their concert got out of tune, as the stonework took up more and more space; the fireplace and chimney grew to be so massive that alternative plans had to be made to accommodate the diminished interior space. Clearly stonemason Mike and his dog Ringer won the competition!” The ranch house is filled with museum quality artwork and antiques that have been handed down through the generations or acquired by unique, serendipitous means. We, and a bunch of our friends, joined Barb and Dick to sit around in a semi-circle at the back of the house to watch the 2017 solar eclipse. As the sky grew darker and darker, the sudden sharp drop in the temperature surprised us all. We sat stunned and shivering in eerie blackness. Even more so for Grandpa Jack and our friend Pete who had backpacked up in the nearby White Cloud Wilderness area to watch the eclipse from 10,000 feet! A year or so before that, we had another memorable experience. Barb and Dick suggested we go Bayhorse Lake for a day of fishing. On the way, amazed, we stopped to gape at wild horses in the distance. Next stop was Bayhorse Ghost Town, one of the best-preserved silver mining towns in Idaho (or anywhere). Exploring ghost towns of the west is one of Grandpa’s and my favorite things to do! Once at the beautifully situated, peaceful Bayhorse Lake, under Barb’s tutelage, I was thrilled to catch trout from the dock. Jack was equally delighted to fish the lake successfully guided by Barb on their pontoon boat. Another year, given our penchants for ghost towns, Barb and Dick took us to see the town of Custer and the remains of the huge Yankee Fork gold dredge. We stopped at a picnic area beside the fork of the Salmon River. Dick recalls, “Jack tried his luck with some native cutthroats.” Jack remembers he was pleased to catch some little ones. After fishing, we all settled down in the shade for lunch at a picnic table overlooking the river. Our perfect picnic was rudely interrupted by an onslaught of attacking yellow jackets! The wasps dove at our sandwiches with a frantic vengeance. We waved our arms wildly and attempted to swat them away. Cursing and yelling at them was futile. “Dang it! I almost bit into one right on my sandwich. It nearly got in my mouth! Shoo! Go away!” Fortunately we were with esteemed animal ecologist Dick, (aka Dr. Richard MacMillen, Professor Emeritus from University of California, Irvine). Dick, always calm, opened an empty plastic sandwich bag. He put a bit of turkey meat inside and used a twig to prop the bag wide open. In no time, wasps zoomed into the trap, ravenously taking the bait. When the bag was teeming with buzzing wasps and we were no longer accosted and now free to enjoy our lunch, Dick zipped the bag closed. “Will the wasps suffocate in there?” I wanted to know. “Or will they be able to chew their way out and attack us with renewed vengeance?” Dick, the renowned scientist, didn’t say a word. He’s a soft-spoken, elderly gentleman. He simply reached to the ground, silently picked up a fist-sized, flat rock and before we had a chance to guess his intentions or what might come next…SPLAT! Dick smashed the rock onto the bag of trapped wasps! Oooh, so that’s how a world-famous animal expert takes care of them.

Ian MacMillen 2022 oral history interview with Dick MacMillen (posted with permission from Maureen Battistella, interviewer)

Ian MacMillen Gail Baker Remembering REM Dick was one of the foundational influences in my career as an ecologist. As one of the 3 professors guiding the UCI Supercourse in spring 1973 he inspired my continuing love and fascination with all desert ecosystems. Joshua Tree will always be close to my heart and always tied to Dick. As P&E (now E&E) Department Chair he helped coordinate an NSF-Student Originated Studies (SOS) Project along with Keith Justice. I was invited to participate and that sealed my pathway to field ecologist! Dick was always supportive of and gave free reign to student research, guiding by example and lots of humor. All those live traps with REM written on them. His research spanning birds, mammals and herps in Hawaii, Australia and North America was an inspiration as well as the diverse and lively group of scientists he associated with. Making all welcome including those of us who were budding ecologists and had lots to learn. He was one of the reasons I chose to visit Australia several different times, including my sabbatical and have close ties there now too. I was lucky to visit Dick and Barb over the last decade and always amazed at their endeavors here in Oregon and their Idaho cabin. What a team! I am so grateful for being at the right place at the right time with the right person. Thank you Dick and you will always be part of my thoughts. Gail Baker

Harry Recher

Harry Recher Judy Recher and Barbara on Dangar Island in 2003.

Harry Recher and Dick on Dangar Island in 2003

William Mautz Orange County from top of Steinhaus Hall 1969

William Mautz First Supercourse. Spring, 1972. Boris, Scott, Unknown, Eva, Scott, Ken Griffin, Dick with Dipodomys

William Mautz Physiological Ecology Class, Mojave Desert, spring, 1971. Barbara Bond, Bill Mautz, Marsha Medina, Ted Case, Dick

Frank Powell Dick and John Wehausen with Supercourse students at WMRS

Brad Berger Dick's efforts in securing the Burns Pinon Ridge Reserve for the UC Natural Reserve System have left an enduring legacy. As a long-term caretaker for the place, my life would never be the same (and far worse!) if it wasn't for Dick. I met him several times starting when I was a grad student at UCI and afterward. He was truly dedicated to the wild places and inspired all who knew him. A big thank you from me. (The photos are from the Burns Reserve after the huge snow of 2008, and of the big boulder pile in the "back yard" of the Burns house.) Thousands of students and researchers have visited and worked at the Burns Reserve since its inception in the 1970's. Thanks, Dick!

David Grubbs Dick Macmillen at Mono Lake ~ 1969