NEW YORK – Artist, adventurer and celebrated wildlife photographer Peter Beard was found dead in woods near his cliff-side home at the tip of Long Island nearly a month after his family reported him missing.
He was 82. “He died where he lived: in nature,” his family said in a statement posted on Beard’s website Sunday night. In recent years, the once-swashbuckling explorer had developed dementia and had at least one stroke, according to the New York Times.
His family confirmed that a body found Sunday in Camp Hero State Park in Montauk was Beard’s. Beard's cause of death was not immediately released by officials.
A phone message was left with East Hampton Police. “Peter defined what it means to be open: open to new ideas, new encounters,