William Richard 'Rick' Brigham

12/26/1940 — 4/15/2026

Service Date: 5/2/2026
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Rick was born Dec. 26, 1940 – (missed Christmas by eight minutes) - in Los Angeles, in the days before freeways. He graduated from John Marshall High School in 1958.

He died Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Clarkston, due to chronic Myelodysplastic disease. He is survived by the love of his life, Cecelia L. Nixon, daughter Pamela, son Wyatt, and various cousins.

He attended Humboldt State College starting in 1961 through February of 1966, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1964 in Wildlife Management. In the summer 1962 he worked for the Alaska Fish and Game Department as a red salmon catch sampler at a cannery at Tokeen in Bristol Bay, and as a stream guard in southeastern Alaska. In the summer 1963 he worked for the Bureau of Land Management in Battle Mountain, Nev., as a member of a range survey crew. Summers of 1964 and 1965 saw him working for the BLM in Idaho Falls, doing watershed inventory and identifying legal boundaries on aerial photos.

In 1965, he married Diane Hodgson. They were married 11 years; had two children, Wyatt and Pamela. They divorced in 1976. During that time, he worked for the BLM as a range conservationist in 1966 in Elko, Nev., and then as the first full-time wildlife biologist in the Elko district. In 1970, the family moved to Phoenix, for the BLM District Biologist position there. It was there that Rick discovered and fell in love with desert bighorn sheep, and joined the Desert Bighorn Council, a West-wide group of professional biologists and managers interested in desert bighorns and their ecology and management.

The family then moved to Carson City, Nev., in 1974 to assume the District Biologist position there and Rick remained at Carson City until his retirement in 2003. He helped write the first Environmental Impact Statement for a land use plan at Carson City.

When he moved to Carson City, there were 15 desert bighorn in the district. At his retirement in 2003, there were 700 bighorns, both Desert and California subspecies, on nine different mountain ranges, directly due to Rick’s efforts. He prepared virtually all of the BLM paperwork and NEPA-National Environmental Policy Act-documents needed for transplants into identified historic bighorn habitats by the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

Another of Rick’s accomplishments while at Carson City was the expansion of water catchment “guzzler” efforts for small game and the development of guzzlers for big game. Over the course of 10 years from the mid-80s to mid-90s, Rick worked with the BLM and local sportsmen’s groups to develop a big game guzzlers manual that became BLM Technical Note 397.

From the mid-70s thru the mid-90s, Rick was active in the Wildlife Society and Desert Bighorn Council (DBC) during which Rick was commissioned by the BLM to develop a set of guidelines for managing domestic sheep in bighorn habitat. Working with other biologists, the initial guidelines were published in the 1990 DBC transactions and became BLM nation-wide guidance in 1993 and policy in 1995.

If that wasn’t enough, Rick was also fire rehabilitation coordinator for the Carson City district and hosted annual visits from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo students interested in wildlife management.

Rick remarried in 1984. His second wife, Carol, died in 2001. They lived in Reno. They had no children.

Rick retired from the BLM in July 2003, after almost 39 years of service. In 2002, at the funeral of a cousin, he met Cecelia Litell Nixon, whom he had known as a teenager in southern California. Following his retirement, they traveled 16,000 miles in four months looking for a place to live, and they ended up in Clarkston, where they moved in November 2003. “Celie is the absolute light of my life – our relationship is the very best thing that has ever happened to me, bar none.”

Rick was very active in shooting and in bighorn work while living in Clarkston. Rick joined the Lewis-Clark Wildlife Club, where he served in various capacities, including range officer. Rick’s bighorn efforts in the Pacific Northwest were as scribe to the Payette Advocates or Bighorn Advocates, a consortium of groups varying from the Nez Perce Tribe to the Wilderness Society to the Hells Canyon Preservation Council.

In addition to these activities, Ceil and he enjoyed fishing, camping, bicycling, walking, hunting in this area and occasionally visiting far-away relatives.

He subscribed to two primary credos: “Tell all the Truth all the Time” and “Give it your best shot every day and then walk away.” Both stood him very well during his career.

Rick was loved by many and will be greatly missed. A graveside service will be held at 1 p.m., Saturday, May 2, at Overacker Cemetery near Genesse. An “open-house” memorial will follow from 2-5 p.m. at the Genesee Fire Station, 235 W. Chestnut St., Genesee.

In lieu of flowers or other gifts, donations may be sent to the Wildlife Society at wildlife.org, the Arizona Desert Bighorn Society at adbss.org or to the Nevada Bighorns Unlimited nevadabighornsunlimited.org.