Margaret Murie
| Margaret Murie | |
|---|---|
Mardy Murie and Olaus at their home, Grand Tetons, 1953
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| Born | Margaret Thomas August 18, 1902 Seattle, Washington |
| Died | October 19, 2003 (aged 101) Moose, Wyoming |
| Pen name | Mardy Murie |
| Occupation | Author, ecologist, and environmentalist |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Subject | Conservation, Wilderness Preservation |
| Notable works | Two in the Far North, Wapiti Wilderness |
| Notable awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom |
| Spouse | Olaus Murie |
| Relatives | see Murie family article, people |
Margaret Thomas "Mardy" Murie (August 18, 1902 – October 19, 2003) was a naturalist, author, adventurer, and conservationist. Dubbed the "Grandmother of the Conservation Movement" by both the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, she helped in the passage of the Wilderness Act, and was instrumental in creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She was the recipient of the Audubon Medal, the John Muir Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor awarded by the United States.
Born Margaret Thomas on August 28, 1902 in Seattle, Washington, Murie moved to Fairbanks, Alaska with her family when she was five years old. She attended Simmons College (Massachusetts), then transferred to and became the first woman to graduate from the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, (now the University of Alaska Fairbanks), with a degree in business administration in 1924. She met Olaus Murie in Fairbanks, and they married in 1924 in Anvik, Alaska. The couple spent their honeymoon traveling over the upper Koyukuk River region by boat and dogsled, conducting caribou research. The couple were the inspiration for John Denver's ballad "A Song For All Lovers."
From 1927 onward, the Muries were residents of Jackson, WY, where Olaus studied ecology, specifically the elk population. Unlike a housewife who greeted her husband at the end of a 9 to 5 day, Mardy was side-by-side with Olaus in the field, studying elk, sheep and numerous other animals in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The couple would camp for weeks at a time in the wild, open valley of Jackson Hole. Olaus' primary goals was to identify pressures on the elk population, causing the startling decrease in the area. Over the course of nearly 40 years, Olaus and Mardy had numerous backcountry expeditions tracking the wildlife in the area. The couple even took expeditions when their three children were still nursing.
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