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Howard Zahniser (center) with brothers Olaus and Adolph Murie on Cathedral Mountain in Mount McKinley National Park (today's Denali National Park & Preserve), Alaska, 1961.
Credit: Courtesy of Wilderness.net image library.
In 1961, a year after Secretary of Interior Fred Andrew Seaton ordered federal protection of millions of acres in the Alaska North Slope Region, Howard Zahniser visited Mount McKinley National Park with Olaus and Adolph Murie. In 1956, Wilderness Society president Olaus Murie and his brother, wildlife biologist Adolph Murie, had launched the campaign to protect wilderness aras in Alaska. In 1980, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act would create 43,585,000 acres of new national parklands in Alaska and add 53,720,000 acres to the National Wildlife Refuge System.