George Melendez Wright (1904-1936) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal posthumously in 1936. He was born into wealthy San Francisco family. As a boy he showed an unusually strong interest in natural history of served as natural history of the San Francisco Bay area. Because of his knowledge of plants and animals he served as natural history instructor for two years for two seasons in a Boy Scout summer camp, when he was 14 and 15 years old. Joining the National Park Service in 1927, Wright was assigned to Yosemite as assistant park naturalist. Wright was independently wealthy and in 1929, concerned about an alomost complete absence o scientific data to inform park management, he proposed that there be established a wildlife survey office and program for the NPS.
In 1934, NPS director Arno Cammerer declared the Fauna recommendations to be official policy. As official management policy aimed at the preservation and restoration of natural resources by a government bureau, and applicable to an entire system of public lands, Fauna No.1's recommendations were unprecendented in the history of national parks and indeed in the history of American public land management. Today, Wright is widely recognized as the founder of scientific natural resource management in the NPS. He had provided the vision, inspiration, funding and leadership.