Angus Munn Woodbury was an American zoologist and ecologist from Utah.
Background
Angus Woodbury was born July 11, 1886 in Saint George, Utah, to parents John Taylor and Mary Evans Woodbury. His elementary education was divided between Salt Lake City, where his father taught at Latter- Day Saints (Mormons) College, and Saint George.
Education
He attended Brigham Young High School in Provo, graduating after two years in 1906. From 1926 to 1927 Woodbury attended Brigham Young University, earning a Bachelor of Surgery in zoology.
Career
He was professor at the University of Utah for over 20 years, and also worked for many years as a ranger-naturalist at Zion National Park. He produced over 100 publications, many focused on the biology of reptiles and birds, but also on insects, ecological succession, and the history of Utah. Woodbury was hired by the United States. Forest Service in 1908, where he worked until 1920.
His duties included working to establish boundaries of Dixie National Forest and managing grazing and logging.
From 1920 to 1926 he took courses at Dixie College, where he also served as a teaching assistant. In 1925 became the first ranger-naturalist hired at Zion National Park, where he worked each summer until 1933, establishing the periodical Zion-Bryce Nature Notes.
From 1927 to 1928 he attended the University of Utah, completing a Master of Surgery degree focused on the reptiles of Utah. After graduating he joined the University of Utah faculty, teaching for the 1928-1929 academic year before taking leave to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, completed in 1931.
He returned to the University of Utah in 1931, where he worked until retirement in 1952, after which he remained active in research and administration.
Woodbury"s research specialized on reptiles and birds of Utah, especially wintering behavior of snakes and tortoises and the geographic distribution of birds. In 1949, he published along with Ross Hardy a "classic study" on the biology of wild desert tortoises: professor Peter Alagona of University of California Santa Barbara writes "their paper provided key insights into the species’ physiology, life history and ecology, and it served as a basis for subsequent research into tortoise evolutionary biology, biogeography, and epidemiology." In 1977, the area where Woodbury and Hardy studied was designated the Woodbury Desert Study Area by the Bureau of Land Management, and is now a part of the Beaver Dam Wash National Conservation Area. Woodbury was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Ornithological Union, the Herpetological League, and the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters.
He supervised the graduate research of nine students who studied birds.
Species named for him include the water bug Ambrysus woodburyi and a subspecies of chisel-toothed kangaroo rat, Dipodomys microps woodburyi.