Margaret "Mardy" Murie, on her porch in Grand Teton National Park, was considered the mother of the modern conservation movement. She died Sunday at age 101. (Photo by LAURA RAUCH / Associated Press archive 2002) Click on photo to enlarge

Margaret "Mardy" Murie, a lifelong champion of Alaska wilderness and a founder of the modern conservation movement, died Sunday at her ranch in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. She was 101.

Murie lived most of her adult life in Moose, Wyo., but grew up in Fairbanks. She was the first woman to graduate from what is now the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and she and her husband, Olaus, played a key role in creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Muries helped with the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, and later, after Olaus' death, Murie lobbied for the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. That act set aside 104 million acres in Alaska as national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests or other conservation units, and more than doubled the size of the Arctic refuge.

ANILCA, as the act is known, has colored Alaska politics and development ever since.

In 1998, Murie was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton, who called her "a pioneer of the environmental movement."

Deborah Williams, executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, called Murie's passing a "huge loss to Alaska conservation."

"She was passionate and articulate and still writing letters and advocating as recently as two years ago," Williams said. "Mardy was also a great Alaskan, and a great Alaska pioneer."

Those who knew Murie described her as a "marvelous lady," an eloquent but humble visionary, a person who never lost her sense of humor, had no ego and no enemies, and who was extremely effective at advocating for wild places. She came across as motherly and caring but had a steely resolve when it came to conservation and a gift with words, according to friends.

"She was a gentle giant," said Allen Smith, Alaska senior policy analyst for the Wilderness Society. "She inspired generations. She was kind of a regular person, but when she stood up and spoke, it would quiet a room."

Ginny Wood, another of Alaska's conservation pioneers who lives in Fairbanks, called Murie a hometown girl who always loved Alaska. Murie moved to Fairbanks with her family when she was 9 years old. Her father was an assistant U.S. attorney. She attended Reed College in Oregon but finished her degree in business administration at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines, now the University of Alaska.

She met Olaus, a biologist, in Fairbanks, and they married 1924 in the village of Anvik on the Yukon River. Olaus Murie had been studying birds in Hooper Bay, and after the wedding, the couple spent about a year studying caribou in the upper Koyukuk region, traveling by steamer and dog sled. His studies of caribou in Alaska and Canada were among the first major studies of the species, according to Roger Kaye, a wilderness specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Fairbanks.

Her adventures growing up in Alaska and as a scientist's wife are chronicled in her book, "Two in the Far North," and in a documentary, "Arctic Dance."

Olaus Murie, who worked for the U.S. Biological Survey, now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was transferred to Wyoming in 1927 to study elk. The couple never returned to Alaska to live, but they traveled here often and always had the state in their minds, Kaye said. Olaus Murie later went on to become president of The Wilderness Society, while Mardy Murie worked at various times for the Izaac Walton League, the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society.

In 1956, the Muries and other field biologists traveled to the upper Sheenjek River on the south slope of the Brooks Range, inside what is now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That trip began the campaign to protect the area as a wildlife refuge. The couple recruited former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas to help persuade President Eisenhower to set aside 8 million acres as the Arctic National Wildlife Range. The range was expanded to 19 million acres and renamed in 1980.

In the earlier part of her life, she worked side by side with her husband, who was a biologist and a conservationist, and they raised three children, Martin, Joanne and Donald. After her husband's death, she began writing and took over much of her husband's conservation work. Their log cabin home in Moose, Wyo., became a center for anyone interested in the conservation movement.

Wood said Murie had been skiing well into her 80s but had been bedridden in recent years. Still, she loved to be outside. Friends in Wyoming recently bundled her up and took her on a car ride to a lake, Wood said. On the return ride home, she asked, "Can't we go to another lake?"

"That's Mardy," Wood said. "She was mothering without being dominating. She took on anyone's problems, and there was no pretense. She was the most down-to-earth person. And, boy, could she be effective."