Olaus Johan Murie (1889-1963) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal in 1953 for “effective and outstanding service in the defense of national parks and...wise counsel toward the shaping of national park conservation policies.” Murie was one of America’s greatest naturalists, famous for his brilliant field investigations into wildlife and author of the classic book The Elk of North America. He was born in the frontier community of Moorhead, Minnesota.
After graduation, Murie became a conservation officer with the Oregon State Game Commission, collecting specimens and taking wildlife photographs. In 1914, he moved on to become field naturalist and curator of mammals at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. In this position, he was charged with studying birds and mammals in their natural habitats. The highlights of his three-year stay at the museum were extended field work in the Hudson Bay and in the Labrador Peninsula of Canada at a time when maps in those areas were nonexistent.
World War I he had his nerves tested in the Army balloon service, whose observers suspended from large and bulbous targets, studied enemy lines. He later studied a M.S. at the University of Michigan in 1927; and was awarded an honorary degree by Pacific University in 1949. In 1924 he married Margaret E. Thomas, who had spent her childhood in Fairbanks, Alaska, and shared his love of the wild country. Together, Murie became a leading conservation figure. She accompanied her husband on most of his field expeditions.
He was a prominent position in the ranks of thoughtful and impassioned Caribou (North the author of seven major publications, served as a spokesperson for the Caribou, American Fauna [NAF] No. 54, 1953), including Alaskan Yukon and Alaskan Tracks (1955), The Elk of North America (1951), Food Habits of the Grizzly Bear in Montana (1959; Jack54), Fauna of the Aleutian Islands America (1951; Field Guide (NAF No. 61, 1959; Jackson), Fauna of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska Peninsula with Margaret Murie, 1960). He also authored numerous popular and technical articles.