Olaus and Mardy Murie spent their honeymoon tracking caribou along the Koyukuk River in Alaska in 1924the beginning of a lifelong partnership to explore and protect Americas wilderness and wildlife.
Born in 1889 to Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota, Olaus became a biologist for the U.S. Bureau of Biological Surveythe precursor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Servicein 1920. His work would ultimately influence actions of at least three presidents.
In Montana, he wrote that the jumble of carved and stratified buttes perhaps mellowed by the setting sun or set off by cloud formations at dawn, leaves nothing to be desired. On Muries recommendation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Fort Peck Game Range in 1936, which would become Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
Muries studies of the elk herd in Wyoming defined the principles of elk research and management in the mid20th century. He served as president of the Wilderness Society and The Wildlife Society and as director of the Izaak Walton League. He not only studied and lobbied for wildlifehe painted it, too. His image of swans in Jackson Hole is on display at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. In 1956, the Muries led their signature expedition to the upper Sheenjek River of Alaskas Brooks Rangewhich Olaus called a little portion of our planet left alone. They lobbied to keep it that way along with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Aldo Leopolds son Starker and Wilderness Act author Howard Zahniser.
In 1960 President Dwight E. Eisenhower set aside eight million acres as the Arctic National Wildlife Range. Twenty years later, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) renamed range to refuge, increased the total area to 19 million acres and designated a large portion as wilderness. The Wilderness Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, a year after Olaus Murie died.
Mardy Murie continued the push for wilderness preservation, empowered by Olaus beliefshared during a 1978 National Public Radio interviewthat it is better to be in the thick of the fight than standing in the corner with your face to the wall.