David Pritchett, Defender of Steelhead Trout and All Wildlife, Dies at 59
A Fierce Advocate for Creek Rehabilitation and Alternative Transportation
David Pritchett, a lover of creeks, fish, and wildlife and a former Santa Barbara City Council candidate, died on August 2 at the age of 59 in Reno, Nevada. His wife, Kathryn Savage, noted in a social media post that “He passed peacefully, without pain, with our family holding his hands. If such a thing exists, he had a good death.”
In Santa Barbara, Pritchett was known for his thorny, outspoken manner while serving on the city’s creeks advisory commission and on the commission for transportation and circulation. He was in favor of creating conditions to induce steelhead to thrive, and encouraging alternative transportation, safer conditions on Milpas Street, and “traffic-calming” devices like bulb-outs, all hot issues during the 2009 campaign.
Locally, Pritchett might be best known for being the campaign manager of Cathy Murillo’s bid to be elected to the Santa Barbara City Council in 2011 and her mayoral race in 2018. Both campaigns were successful. Pritchett himself ran unsuccessfully for council in 2009. They were married at the time but divorced a few years later.
Pritchett was a wildlife biologist, working for U.S. Fish & Wildlife and also as a private consultant. He took a temporary job in Atlanta as a federal biological consultant on a development project and later moved to Nevada, where he continued his civic activism. To recognize his career caring for public lands as well as his work with Reno’s Recreation and Parks Commission and other organizations, the city’s mayor, Hillary L. Schieve, declared July 27 to be David Pritchett Day.
Pritchett had received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer on March 13, but a routine replacement of a treatment stent had caused a sepsis that led to renal failure. He was in hospice care at home when he died.
One of Pritchett’s pet projects was the Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation, which brings youth and families to the valley outside Reno carved by the Truckee River and to the parks in the surrounding counties. Kathryn Savage requested that a remembrance in honor of David Pritchett be made to the nonprofit Truckee Meadows.
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