Buechner was born in 1918, in
Scotia, New York. He received a bachelor's degree from
New York State College of Forestry and
Syracuse University in 1941. He then received a master's degree from
Texas A&M College in 1943, and in 1949 got his Ph.D. from
Oklahoma A&M College. From 1948 to 1965 he taught
botany and
zoology at
Washington State College. In 1965 he became a member of the
Smithsonian as its first director of the office of
ecology. For 3 years (1969–1972), he was a Senior Ecologist for the
Office of Environmental Sciences, and for 3 more years (1972–1975), for the
National Zoological Park. He died in Washington, D.C., on October 7, 1975. Buechner's analysis of the
territorial behavior of the
Ugandan kob, first observed by his wife Jimmie H. Buechner, was widely discussed by other wildlife biologists and ecologists and attracted the attention of popular authors such as
Robert Ardrey. In 1950 Buechner won the George Mercer Award of the
Ecological Society of America, for his famous study "Life History, Ecology, and Range Use of the Pronghorn in Trans-Pecos Texas". He also received The
Wildlife Society's Terrestrial Research Award for his work with
bighorn sheep. Twice Helmut Buechner was awarded
Fulbright Program appointments as Senior Scholar on Wildlife Research in
Uganda, from 1956 to 1958. ==References==