Olaus Murie with his Dog

Olaus Murie (1889 - 1963) led a life worthy of a dozen adventure novels, and his conservation legacy is still carried on by his wife, Mardy. The son of Norwegian immigrants, Murie joined after college the Carnegie Museum’s expeditions to Hudson Bay and Labrador, where he developed a life-long love affair with the north country. He became a wildlife biologist for the Bureau of Biological Survey (forerunner of today’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) in 1920; for the next 6 years, he would conduct exhaustive studies of Alaskan caribou populations and migratory routes. In 1927, he studied the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, elk herd, resulting in the publication of the classic volume, “The Elk of North America” and earning him the name – at least in Wyoming – of “Mr. Elk.” Murie’s interest in America’s national parks led President Franklin Roosevelt to enlarge Olympic National Park and to create Jackson Hole National Monument (later a park) in 1943. He resigned from the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1945 to become director of The Wilderness Society, lobbying successfully against Federal dam construction within national parks and leading the effort to create Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. He is credited with building national support for the 1964 Wilderness Act, passed just months after his death and signed by President Lyndon Johnson, and for setting in motion efforts to increase refuge, park, and wilderness area legislation that culminated in 1980 with President Jimmy Carter’s signing of the Alaska Lands Act. Here, Murie stands with his lead sled dog, "Jack," circa 1921-23.