The Quiet World_ Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 - Douglas Brinkley [163]
Scientific expertise had its social advantages: the Muries’ home soon became a virtual bed-and-breakfast for conservationists wanting to learn more about Alaska. Olaus continued his frequent business trips to Washington, D.C.; a third child (Donald) was born; and Bob Marshall’s new “wilderness philosophy” became their guidebook. Their love story was famous in the conservationist movement during the dark days of Herbert Hoover.
And then Franklin D. Roosevelt became president. Suddenly, the White House cared about what they thought—imagine that. Throughout the New Deal years, 1933 to 1940, in fact, the Muries joined Bob Marshall as the world experts on Arctic Alaskan wildlife. Olaus—who was called the “father of modern elk management”—shuttled between Fairbanks, Jackson Hole, and Washington, D.C. He adhered to Charles Darwin’s belief that “a man who dares waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”28 Bringing the three children with them, the Muries also traveled in British Columbia and the volcanic Aleutians. Marshall came to stay with them in Wyoming to plot conservation strategy. Olaus’s brother Adolph, a wildlife biologist himself, continued assisting in their pioneering studies of the great Arctic caribou herds and Jackson Hole elk. In 1940 Adolph published his landmark Ecology of the Coyote in Yellowstone, the first serious predator study in the history of the National Park Service.29
Being an ardent preservationist also had social drawbacks. Very few people want to discuss moose dewlap or black spruce seedlings over supper. To many Alaskans, the Muries were a bore. Moreover, the Muries’ occupation didn’t bring in dollars. So it was a memorable occasion when Olaus and Mardy visited Washington, D.C., in the early 1930s to have dinner with Bob Marshall, cofounder of The Wilderness Society. He was “full of enthusiasm and eagerness,” as Mardy put it, to learn about grayling spawns, lagoon ice, gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) delivering calves, and marshy cotton grass. Experts like an audience, and Marshall was a fine audience for Olaus and Mardy Murie. What Bob gave to the Muries, and what initiated a lasting friendship, was the momentum needed to win the fight to keep Arctic Alaska roadless.30
The Muries and Marshall weren’t alone in their heartfelt concern for the fate of Alaskan wildlife. Aldo Leopold, for example, was sickened by the slaughter of bears. When the writer and photographer John M. Holzworth published an awe-inspiring book about the brown bears and bald eagles on Admiralty Island, Leopold entered the fray to save places rich in wildlife.31 Leopold, in fact, urged that Admiralty Island should become a national bear reserve. Leopold also wanted the Katmai National Monument to be enlarged to encompass a feeding area for brown bears. (The highest density of brown bears ever recorded was at what is today Katmai National Park: 551 bears per 1,000 square kilometers.32) When the Alaska Game Commission, bowing under political pressure, came up with the policy that the only good bear is a dead bear, Leopold led a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill, petitioning the special Senate Committee on Wildlife Resources to save Alaska’s bears. “I personally lack first-hand knowledge of Alaskan conditions but I strongly lean to the belief that where commercial interests conflict with bear conservation, the former have been given undue priority,” Leopold wrote to Senator Frederic Walcott of Connecticut. “I favor the sanctuary and will strongly support any policy when your committee of others may evolve to not merely perpetuate the species, but to assure such perpetuation on the largest range in the largest possible numbers.”33
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