[This summer, my older son is extending his prior efforts to help combat climate change by interning with the amazing Climate Just Cities project. That project is part of the long legacy of American environmental activism, so this week I’ll highlight a handful of such activisms. Leading up to a special weekend post on Climate Just Cities!]
On three
factors that help explain the unique life and legacy of the “Grandmother
of the Conservation Movement.”
1)
Alaska: Born Margaret Elizabeth Thomas in
Seattle in 1902, Mardy and her family moved to Fairbanks, Alaska when she was
9; although she briefly attended colleges in both Oregon and Massachusetts, she
would return to Alaska to finish school at the Alaska
Agricultural College and School of Mines[ (becoming its first female
graduate in 1924). While her
life, inspiring marriage (on which more momentarily), and conservation
efforts would take her to many other places for much of the rest of her life,
Alaska always remained a focal point, as illustrated by her successful 1956
campaign to create the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and her late 1970s testimony in support of the Alaska National
Interests Lands Conservation Act (signed by President Carter in 1980). Alaska
is of course hugely singular on the American landscape, but it’s also long
served as an exemplification of the broader need to protect public lands, and
no one has been more instrumental to those efforts than Mardy Murie.
2)
Her Marriage: She was Mardy Murie because of Olaus
Murie, a biologist and fellow conservationist she met in Fairbanks and married
(at sunrise in the village of Anvik) the same year she graduated college. I’m
not sure any single detail could better capture their genuine partnership than
the fact that their
honeymoon consisted of a 500-mile dogsled journey around Alaska to research
its wildlife and ecosystems. The lifelong, deeply inspiring partnership that
developed from there would eventually take the Muries to Moose, Wyoming (near
Jackson Hole), where the ranch that served as both their home and their
research base has since become a National Historic
Landmark (linked to Grand Teton National Park) as well as an operating scientific
and conservation school. Mardy’s activisms weren’t defined (and certainly
weren’t circumscribed) by her marriage, but they were absolutely complemented
and amplified by it, as were his.
3)
The
Wilderness Act: While it doesn’t really make sense to boil centuries-long
movements down to individual moments or laws, it’s nonetheless fair to say that
one of the most significant such turning points for the environmental and
conservation movements in America was the 1964 passage of the
Wilderness Act, the first law to create a national legal definition of “wilderness.”
That act was written by the then-Executive Director of the Wilderness Society, Howard
Zahniser, and in both its creation and its nearly decade-long fight for passage
represented a collaboration between many of the leading voices in that longstanding
organization—a community that featured Mardy and Olaus Murie throughout their
lives. While Olaus had tragically passed away in 1963, Mardy
attended the ceremony at which President Lyndon Johnson signed the Act, as
is only appropriate for an activist without whom every 20th century conservation
effort would look different and far less successful.
Next environmental
activism tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? American environmental voices or efforts you’d highlight?
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