Judge McKeown sided with Led Zeppelin, Dr. Seuss and now the Wilderness Act

A Wyoming Boy Scout who learned to love the outdoors long before he became a lawyer has tackled such critical national questions as whether loggers should cut down the nesting trees of marbled murrelets, whether the wilderness should be valued and whether Led Zeppelin should sing the opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven” by an American band.

That’s a sampling of the issues addressed by Margaret McKeown, a Casper native, UW alum and judge on the California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

She is also president of the Teton Science Schools’ Murie Ranch Committee, a group that oversees the collection of cabins in Grand Teton National Park, is considered the birthplace of the country’s 112 million-acre system of forever preserved wilderness areas.

Those wild, unchanged places have repeatedly rejuvenated McKeown when she needed it most, such as after she led pop cult arguments over whether Ian Flemming had copied 007’s movie personality and whether Trekkies from Dr. Seuss had stolen.

“As life becomes more and more compressed and busy, I think I appreciate more and more that there are areas that are primarily unencumbered,” McKeown said in an interview. She made her comments as the Murie Ranch – an outpost that aims to educate people about the spiritual renewal available in the natural world – celebrated its 60th anniversary.^e anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

“I remember going to a fish and game camp near Laramie as a kid and working on beaver dams and tagging fish, and that has stuck with me my whole life.”

Margaret McKeown

The landmark legislation preserved federal lands of “primitive character and influence” that “provide excellent opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unrestricted form of recreation.”

Just the kind of refuge you might need after weighing in on how the doctrine of laches, intentional trespass, intentional piracy, fair use, and other legal principles might apply to the courtroom bickering between novelists, musicians , screenwriters and TV promoters.

“I remember going to a fish and game camp near Laramie as a kid and working on beaver dams and tagging fish, and that has stuck with me my whole life,” McKeown said. “That really inspired me to realize how important a place can be and how important solitude can be.”

Serendipity in moose

McKeown, whose wilderness travels have taken her to the slopes of Shishapangma, Tibet, came across the Murie Ranch just south of Grand Teton National Park headquarters in Moose during a winter getaway. The ranch was for many years the home of Olaus and Mardy Murie, two parents of the modern conservation movement.

“I snowshoeed in and just didn’t know anything about the Murie Ranch,” she said. A staffer emerged from a snow-covered hut, informed her, and set McKeown on his way “to find out who the Muries were and what they meant.”

The couple was critical to the conservation of 2 million acres of national forests in Wyoming, including the Bridger, Teton, Washakie and North Absaroka wilderness areas. That was protected by the Wilderness Act of 1964, a measure that grew out of years of conservation confabs at the Murie Ranch in the 1960s.

Mardy Murie coaxed attendees and Christmas visitors to her home with cookies, a recipe for which McKeown included in her free 2020 book “The Nineteenth Amendment Centennial Cookbook.”

Congressionally designated wilderness areas are tracts of federal land that are roadless, undeveloped and preserved. Permanent “installations” and settlements are prohibited. Mechanized travel and motorcycles are not permitted. Wilderness areas are “where the hand of man has not yet set foot,” David Brower of the Sierra Club once said. The Teton Science Schools’ annual Spirit of Conservation Award and celebration recently turned 60^e anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

“We recognize, of course, that Natives have been there longer than the Wilderness Act, and were using the land in a very productive way,” McKeown said. “But we also know that without the protections that Congress gave it, we might not have the approximately 112 million acres (rural) that we have today.”

As McKeown researched the history of the Wilderness Act, she discovered an individual who urged the Muries to preserve the ranch as the environmental campus it does today.

“Someone showed me a letter from Judge (William O.) Douglas (the late U.S. Supreme Court) to the Muries, saying that they should give this homestead to the National Park Service for the sake of conservation and as a spiritual place to to enjoy nature. ,” McKeown said on TV Judgment calls podcast. “I thought it was quite interesting that Judge Douglas had contact with these humble conservationists from Wyoming.”

McKeown investigated further. Douglas, an activist, “ran a one-man lobby shop from his chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court,” the podcast said. For example, he strayed from the bench to organize walks on the 300-kilometer C&O Canal to promote its preservation as a park.

“The story just unfolded that Judge Douglas had a life on the bench, and then had a completely separate life in the wilderness promoting the environment,” she said on the podcast. “It seemed like this was a story worth telling.”

McKeown published “Citizen justice: The Ecological Legacy of William O. Douglas, public advocate and conservation champion” in 2022.

“It all really started with that serendipity moment of snowshoeing to the Murie Ranch and then also realizing that everyone should know about this,” she said.

Murie magic

At the Teton Science Schools and Murie Ranch, students can gain environmental awareness, including about wilderness, the Wilderness Act, and the biological and conservation work of the Muries. McKeown recently sat in Olaus and Mardy Murie’s cabin to reflect on the genesis of wilderness conservation and how conservation should be taught to the next generation.

“If Wyoming schoolchildren were all inspired, even for a short time, by the Murie magic… they would carry that experience with them for a long time,” she said.

That experience could become important given the challenges of wilderness conservation today.

“We’re seeing weather patterns changing…glaciers retreating,” she said. “We also see wildlife patterns changing. There are some invisible consequences and that is what many scientists, biologists and wildlife experts are now looking at.”

There is also an infatuation with planet Earth and increased demand for access to open spaces, including the use of now-banned mechanization such as bicycles to travel through wilderness areas. Mountain climbing faces a reckoning, as managers and politicians grapple with how to do it take into account the necessary fixed anchors.

Regardless of deeply held beliefs about the sanctity of nature, or whether one can paddle but not pedal, judges cannot impose these beliefs on others. They don’t make the law, she said.

Judge Douglas may have wished he could have done that. In a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club against Disney’s proposed Mineral King ski area, he wrote a minority opinion praising the rights of nature.

“He wrote in his dissent … that it’s not just about the people, but you have the rights to the river, the mountains and other natural beauty,” she said. “He was one of the early proponents of this idea.”

“In Washington state … one of the cities has essentially written into their local law the right of orcas – to speak for their conservation and their conservation,” she said. “I think there is definitely a lot more interest in this concept than before.”

Though she’s able to shed her judicial robes and leave the vaulted chambers of San Francisco’s 1905 Beaux Arts-California federal courthouse for a romp in the woods, it’s not her job to sniff for the marbled murrelet and confirm whether it lays only one egg at a time. on the broad branches of an old-growth conifer.

“We don’t really explore these issues outside of the data that’s been presented to us,” she said. Judges don’t need to have the birding skills of James Bond, the American ornithologist whose name Fleming borrowed for his hero, before deciding the fate of a seabird that, as she wrote, has “secret nesting habits in tall trees… camouflaged feather patterns.” and fleeing at high speed.”

Instead, the opinion she wrote in favor of the murrelet landed on “the adequacy of notice of intent to sue,” “actual injury,” “proximate causation,” and other legal constructs. No murrelets were seen during the writing of that advice.

“I feel like I’m privileged in my exposure to the outdoors,” McKeown said, but “we have to recognize that when cases come before us, whether it’s an environmental case or some other case … we look at the facts. and we also look at the law.

“I think there’s no doubt that a varied life experience provides a richer foundation,” she said. “But at the end of the day, we can’t wave our magic wand.”

112 million hectares

To date, Congress has protected approximately 112 million acres of public lands as wilderness. The Murie Ranch displayed a pen that President Lyndon Johnson used to sign the Wilderness Act as McKeown and others recently celebrated the law’s 60th anniversary. President Johnson gave the plume to Mardy Murie after he used it.

“I think (pen), plus actually seeing the physical wooden sign that said Wilderness’s Home, really highlighted what a special place we have,” she said. I always learn something new at the Murie Ranch.

A Brightening Wilderness could win over future lawyers as they weigh in on legal wrangles involving spy novelists, children’s book authors, TV producers and rock stars. From McKeown’s reading it seems they could use it.

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s “Stairway” “has another ascending line played simultaneously with the descending chromatic line, and a distinct range of pitches in the arpeggios,” none of which appear in the song Taurus by American band Spirit, McKeown wrote . ; Ian Fleming didn’t cheat on a collaborating screenwriter and portray the character of ‘Bond’ on screen. James Bond” and Star Trek promoters didn’t go where no man had gone before, bold or otherwise, when they used Theodor Geisel’s characters to promote their TV show.

“(I) feel like it would be great to be a kid again and be at their school or be on their field education trips,” McKeown said of the Teton Science Schools students. “We want to inspire, and that’s our mission, and that’s why I’m so committed.”

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