MARGARET WENTWORTH OWINGS
CSPRA Honorary State Park Ranger 1998

A native of Berkeley, and graduate of Mills College, Margaret Wentworth Owings at age 85, has contributed a lifetime in defense of wildlife and the environment. Wallace Stegner described her as, "A woman with principles and convictions, a woman acutely sensitive to natural beauty and friendly to wild things, and committed to their rescue and preservation."

She was a member of the California State Parks Commission from 1963 to 1969, the National Parks Foundation from 1968 through 1969, a Director, African Wildlife Leadership Foundation from 1968 through 1980, a Director of the Defenders of Wildlife from 1969 to 1974, and a Director of the Environmental Defense Fund from 1972 to 1983. In addition, she was the Founder and President of Friends of the Sea Otter from 1968 to 1990 and Founder and President of the Mountain Lion Preservation Foundation from 1987 to 1990.

As a State Park Commissioner Margaret was the crusader who provided North Coast State Park redwoods from proposed freeway construction. She is also credited with having protected San Jose Creek Beach, (a part of Carmel River State Beach), from development and for its ultimate inclusion in the California State park system.

Many of Margaret's efforts to save things were ultimately successful as a result of her skill as an interpreter. In the tradition of the State Park Ranger she gave people new understandings and insights. Yorke Edwards has described a good interpreter as a, "sort of pied piper, leading people easily into new and fascinating worlds that their senses never really penetrated before." Margaret's life work is the culmination of her skills in interpretation.

Margaret has received numerous honors in recognition of her lifetime of commitment to environmental issues. Those awards have been received from the Nature Conservancy, the Department of the Interior, the U. S, Humane Society, the Mountain Lion Foundation, and the National Audubon Society. In receiving the National Audubon Society Medal Citation in 1964, the Society celebrated her as, "An artistic, articulate citizen of the Golden State, a conservationist to whom the word means action."

With her husband, noted architect Nathaniel Owings, she helped draft the Big Sur Land Use plan and has served as a trustee and advisory board member of the Big Sur Land Trust for many years. She was the driving force behind the 1989 State Initiative to ban the hunting of mountain lions and to preserve their habitat through Proposition 117.

Margaret's lifetime of commitment to causes and the accomplishments she has accumulated along the way are too numerous to enumerate. A sense for the magnitude and caliber of her contributions is evidenced by author Margaret Wentworth Owings', "Artist and Wildlife and Environmental Defender", an oral history conducted in 1986-1988 by Suzanne Riess and Ann Lage, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1991..