13 Facts About Adolph Murie

Adolph Murie, the first scientist to study wolves in their natural habitat, 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.

Adolph Murie was instrumental in protecting wolves from eradication and in preserving the biological integrity of the Denali National Park and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In 1989 Professor John A Murray of the English Department at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks received an NEH grant to inventory the extensive Adolph Murie written and slide archives at Rasmusson Library in the Arctic and Polar Collection.

Adolph Murie wrote a forty-page report and biographical narrative of Adolph Murie, which remains unpublished but which is in his papers.

In 1922, prior to completing college, Adolph Murie joined his brother, Olaus Murie, on an expedition to Mount McKinley National Park, the first of many trips he would make to Alaska to do biological research.

Adolph Murie subsequently worked on projects for the university's Zoology Museum, among other things doing research on mammals in Guatemala and British Honduras.

In 1934, Adolph Murie went to work for the Wildlife Division of the National Park Service.

In 1937, Adolph Murie conducted a study of coyotes in Yellowstone National Park, published as Ecology of the Coyote in Yellowstone.

In 1939, the National Park Service assigned Adolph Murie to assess the relationship between the Dall sheep and the wolf in the Mount McKinley area.

McKinley, is considered a classic, especially given the detailed field observations which Adolph Murie spent hours collecting from 1939 to 1941, including the discovery that wolves ate mice.

Adolph Murie based himself in 1939 at Sanctuary River Cabin No 31, in Denali park, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Adolph Murie wrote letters and submitted testimony to Congress regarding Isle Royale, Jackson Hole, Mount McKinley, and other wilderness areas threatened by development or predator control programs, including an article against pesticide use in Grand Teton National Park in 1966.

Adolph Murie suffered from epilepsy and died from a seizure on August 16,1974, at the STS Ranch, now part of the Murie Ranch Historic District in Moose, Wyoming.