Background
Moore was the son of Henry D. Moore, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman.
Moore was the son of Henry D. Moore, a wealthy Philadelphia businessman.
Harvard University; University of Pennsylvania.
In his obituary, Lionel Stevenson wrote, "Robert Thomas Moore was an exceptional amalgam of the poet, the scientist, and the man of affairs"
Moore earned a bachelor"s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1904 and an M. A. from Harvard University in 1905 in English literature. Moore"s father was from Maine, and owned a family vacation camp at Big Benson. Moore purchased land on Borestone Mountain in Maine and began the Borestone Mountain Fox Company.
The Company ran several fur farms that raised foxes for their pelts, which were used for fur garments.
In 1921 the Borestone Mountain farm was referred to as "the leading ranch in North America". In the 1920s Moore opened the Borestone Mountain Ranch, which was a fur farm near Big Bear Lake in southern California.
In addition to his business activities, Moore was an active ornithologist who published about 60 scientific papers. From 1911–1916 Moore edited Cassinia, which is the journal of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club.
Moore moved to California around 1929, and became an associate of the Department of Zoology at the California Institute of Technology.
In 1933 he hired Chester C. Lamb to help build his collection of birds. Lamb worked with Moore on the project for 22 years, collecting ~40,000 bird and mammal specimens in Mexico from 1933 until 1955. Friedmann also particularly notes Moore"s discovery of two new bird species and a genus.
Moore is credited at the Integrated Taxonomic Information System with the discoveries of five bird species (the tufted jay, the masked mountain-tanager, the maroon-fronted parrot, the short-crested coquette, and the Balsas screech-owl) and thirty subspecies.
Moore was first to climb the Ecuadorean stratovolcano Sangay in 1929. From 1934–1938, Moore chaired the Galápagos Commission of Ecuador, which has worked to conserve the natural history of the Galápagos Islands.
In 1940, he was elected a Fellow of the American Ornithologists" Union. The prizes and publication of the anthology were continued annually through 1977, well past Moore"s death in 1958.
Moore had established a charitable foundation to underwrite the expenses of administering the prizes and publishing the anthology.
In 2000, ownership of the sanctuary was transferred to the Maine Audubon Society. The sanctuary is open to hikers, and incorporates the Robert Thomas Moore Nature Center.