University of Wisconsin professor and wildness advocate Harold C. “Bud” Jordahl was born in McIntosh, Minnesota, on August 18, 1926, the son of Harold C. and Margaret S. Jordahl. He was raised in Minnesota and Ohio, and after service in the army during World War II, he attended the University of Michigan. At Michigan he earned both a B.S. (1949) and an M.S. (1950) in forestry. In 1955 he completed a second master's degree in Public Administration at Harvard University.
In 1950 the Wisconsin Conservation Dept. (later the Department of Natural Resources) hired Jordahl as a game biologist and district game manager. In 1956 he became the department's federal aid coordinator. In addition to managing the federal programs, Jordahl was heavily involved in departmental fish and game land acquisition and in encouraging the private support of wildlife resources. In 1961 Governor Gaylord Nelson named Jordahl as a recreation specialist in the newly-created Department of Resource Development. Jordahl later served as secretary of the department. In this capacity Jordahl played an important role in developing Nelson's Outdoor Recreation Act Program (ORAP). In 1963 he was appointed regional coordinator for the Upper Mississippi-Upper Great Lakes region, a position in Madison within the office of the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. During the next four years Jordahl not only coordinated all of the department's programs in the region but he also worked with government officials and local advocacy organizations that culminated in the creation of the Apostle Island National Lakeshore in 1970 and the designation of the Upper St. Croix in 1968 as one of the nation’s first wild and scenic rivers. The Lower St. Croix received the same designation in 1972.
In 1967 Jordahl was appointed to the Upper Great Lakes Regional Commission, a federal body created to encourage economic development in the Midwest. At the same time the University of Wisconsin Extension appointed him to a part time teaching position in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. In 1969 this appointment became a full time position as both a regional planning specialist with the University Extension and a professor with the University. Over the next twenty years Jordahl's resource policy seminar would become a training ground for many prominent urban and rural planners. Jordahl was also a prolific writer and a frequent public speaker on environmental and conservation subjects, as well as serving with many professional and academic organizations and committees. Most prominent among these were his appointment to the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, his work with state and federal officials and University faculty to secure a wild river designation for the Lower Wisconsin River (1989), and his assignment by the Extension that led to the creation of the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center. Other activities too numerous to list here are included in the biographical and bibliographical material in the papers.
Shortly before retiring from the University of Wisconsin in 1989 Jordahl received the Wisconsin Idea Award for his contributions to natural resources policy. In 2005 he was inducted into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame.
In 1955 Jordahl married Marilyn Hanson, and the couple had four children. Harold Jordahl died on May 11, 2010.
