Dr. John Rumm, Curator of Western History and Buffalo Bill Museum Curator at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, has received the 2013 Joseph M. Carey Research Fellowship, awarded annually by the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. Rumm will use the $2500 grant to study the wildlife research, management work, and writings of brothers Olaus and Adolph Murie in Wyoming and other parts of the West. Rumm is also the recipient of a $750 Lola Homsher research grant from the Wyoming Historical Society for the same project.
According to Rumm, Olaus and Adolph Murie were “prominent 20th-century naturalists and leaders in the American environmental movement, who spent much of their careers in wildlife research and management in Wyoming, especially at Grand Teton and Yellowstone.” He notes that while much scholarship work exists on the Muries’ research in Alaska, their wildlife research in Wyoming and other areas in the American West has received less attention.
Focusing on the period from the 1920s to the 1950s, Rumm’s research will explore both brothers’ scientific work with their respective agencies—Olaus with the Bureau of Biological Survey and its successor, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Adolph with the National Park Service. “Olaus and Adolph Murie conducted path-breaking research in Yellowstone, Grand Teton and other national parks, studying relationships between large game animals and predators, especially elk, moose, coyotes, and wolves,” Rumm says. “The life histories they wrote about these species remain fresh and vital today,” he adds.
“Both brothers left behind extensive correspondence, field notes, research reports, and other papers, including materials that have escaped other scholars’ attention,” Rumm says. He has already conducted research on the Muries at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s McCracken Research Library, Denver Public Library, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Archives. Rumm’s grant funding will support research in Murie papers at the American Heritage Center, the Murie Center, and Teton Science School in Moose, Wyoming, and other repositories.
“My research will build a base for producing two book-length monographs: a dual biography of the lives and professional careers of Olaus and Adolph Murie, and a history of the development of the wildlife profession from the 1920s through the 1950s.” Rumm adds. Once more research has been done Rumm expects to begin presenting his findings later this year.
Since 1917, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West has been committed to the greatness and growth of the American West, keeping western experiences alive. The Center, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, weaves the varied threads of the western experience—history and myth, art and Native culture, firearms, and the nature and science of Yellowstone—into the rich panorama that is the American West.
For additional information, visit centerofthewest.org or the Center’s page on Facebook.
