Margaret Wentworth Owings (29 April 1913 – 21 January 1999) was an American environmentalist, whose notable contributions to the movement include founding and serving as the first president of the Friends of the

Sea Otter The sea otter (''Enhydra lutris'') is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between , making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the small ...

."Margaret W. Owings, 85, Defender of Wild Creatures"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Owings earned numerous awards for her inspiring work in conservation, including the

National Audubon Society The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organ ...

Medal in 1983, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

' Environment Program's Gold Medal Award and the

U.S. Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the mana ...

's Conservation Service Award. Margaret Owings was named by the Audubon Society as one of 100 individuals who had done the most to shape the environmental movement, in a list that also included

Jacques-Yves Cousteau Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 191025 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful Aqua-Lung, open-circuit SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). Th ...

and

Lady Bird Johnson Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson (''née'' Taylor; December 22, 1912 – July 11, 2007) was First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 as the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. She previously served as Second Lady from 1961 to 1963 when ...

. Born April 29, 1913 in Berkeley, California, Margaret Wentworth Owings graduated from

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

in 1934 and completed graduate studies in art at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1935. Her first marriage was to Malcolm Stuart Millard, with whom she had a daughter, Wendy. She and Malcolm lived in Deerfield, Illinois before moving to Carmel, California in the early 1940s. Her second marriage was to Nathaniel Alexander Owings, a founding partner of the architectural firm of

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...

. Margaret and Nathaniel wrote the Big Sur Land Use Plan, and were key players in the fight to prevent the development of

Big Sur, California Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast of California between Carmel and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. It is frequently praised for its dramatic scenery. Big Sur ha ...

. From 1963 to 1969 she was the sole woman serving on the California State Park Commission. She led numerous environmental groups including Defenders of Wildlife, the

National Park Foundation The National Park Foundation (NPF) is the official charity of the National Park Service (NPS) and its national park sites. The NPF was chartered by Congress in 1967 with a charge to "further the conservation of natural, scenic, historic, scientif ...

, African Wildlife Leadership Foundation and the

Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Defense Fund or EDF (formerly known as Environmental Defense) is a United States-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group. The group is known for its work on issues including global warming, ecosystem restoration, oceans, and hu ...

. She was also a founder of the

Rachel Carson Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose influential book ''Silent Spring'' (1962) and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental m ...

Council. Owings died in 1999, just after her book "Voices from the Sea"Pivotal coastal environmentalist Margaret Wentworth Owings writes a book detailing the early victories of the local environmental movement - Monterey County Weekly: News
/ref> was published.

Works

References

External links

Guide to the Margaret Wentworth Owings Papers
at the UC Berkeley

Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

* Owings, Nathaniel A
Transcript of interview at Owings home in Big Sur California, March 25, 1970

Lyndon Baines Johnson Library The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, also known as the LBJ Presidential Library, is the presidential library and museum of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States (1963–1969). It is located on the grounds of t ...

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, Oral History Project, Access Record Number 76-5. {{DEFAULTSORT:Owings, Margaret Wentworth American conservationists American women environmentalists 1913 births 1999 deaths Harvard University alumni 20th-century American non-fiction writers Mills College alumni American nature writers 20th-century American women writers