Margaret Thomas "Mardy" Murie was a naturalist, author, adventurer, and conservationist.
Education
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.
Career
Dubbed the "Grandmother of the Conservation Movement" by both the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, she helped in the passage of the Wilderness Acting, and was instrumental in creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Born Margaret Thomas on August 28, 1902 in Seattle, Washington, Murie moved to Fairbanks, Alaska with her family when she was five years old. 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 Foreign All Lovers." After her husband"s death in 1963, Murie began writing and took over much of her husband"s conservation work, writing letters and articles, traveling to hearings and making speeches.
Murie returned to Alaska to survey potential wilderness areas for the National Park Service and worked on the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Acting that was signed by President Carter in 1980. That legislation set aside 104,000,000 acres (420,000 km2) of land in Alaska and doubled the size of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Murie Residence in Moose, Wyoming was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, and as part of the Murie Ranch Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.