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Adolph Murie
Adolph Murie (1899-1974) was a naturalist, author, and wildlife biologist who pioneered field research on wolves, bears, and other mammals and birds in Arctic and sub-Arctic Alaska...view moreAdolph Murie (1899-1974) was a naturalist, author, and wildlife biologist who pioneered field research on wolves, bears, and other mammals and birds in Arctic and sub-Arctic Alaska. He was also instrumental in protecting wolves from eradication and in preserving the biological integrity of the Denali National Park and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
He was born on September 6, 1899 in Moorhead, Minnesota to Ed and Marie Winstrom. In 1922, prior to completing college, Adolph Murie joined his brother, Olaus Murie, on an expedition to Mt. McKinley National Park, the first of many trips he would make to Alaska to do biological research. Murie received a bachelor’s degree from Concordia College, and attended graduate school at the University of Michigan, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1929. He subsequently worked on projects for the university’s Zoology Museum, among other things doing research on mammals in Guatemala and British Honduras.
In 1934, he went to work for the Wildlife Division of the National Park Service on a number of assignments, which resulted in studies of coyotes, elk, and bears in Wyoming, elk in the Olympics in Washington, coyotes in Arizona and the Yellowstone, and earned him the National Park Service Distinguished Service Award.
In 1947, he became Field Research Biologist for the National Park Service, spending a large part of his time in the Mt. McKinley National Park region of Alaska. His Wolves of Mt. McKinley is a famous study of the wolf as a predator on the white mountain sheep in Mt. McKinley National Park.
He died on August 16, 1974, at the STS Ranch, now part of the Murie Ranch Historic District in Moose, Wyoming.
In 1976 the Stanford University Law School established the “Olaus and Adolph Murie Award” for the best work done by a student in Environmental Law. The Murie Science and Learning Center in Denali National Park was opened and officially dedicated to Adolph Murie in 2004.view less