Margaret Nygard

Margaret Nygard (25 January 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a British-American environmentalist and conservationist.

Born in British India to a civil servant, she was educated in both India and Britain.

Margaret Jacqueline Cruden Rodger was born on 25 January 1925 in Nasik, Bombay Presidency, in British India to Eileen (née Owen) and Robert C. Rodger.

Her father's family was originally from Ayr, Scotland, and he served during World War I in the Gallipoli campaign.

After the war, he was posted in India where he served as a colonial police official.

Rodger began her schooling in Goudhurst, Kent, and then attended private grammar school in India.

After returning to England, she began her secondary schooling at Princess Helena College in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.

During the 1940 and 1941 bombing campaign against Britain, her school was relocated to British Columbia, Canada.

During The Blitz, the German bombing campaign launched from 1940 through 1941 against the United Kingdom, bombs were often dropped near the school and a decision was made to relocate the students to Ottawa, Ontario, in 1941.

In Canada, Rodger attended Ottawa Ladies' College for a year and then spent another year at Victoria College in Toronto.

Continuing her studies, she enrolled at University of British Columbia, where she met Holger Olof Victorson Nygard, a fellow student, who was from Bertby, in the Vörå municipality, of Ostrobothnia, Finland.

Nygard studied English at the University of British Columbia and after her graduation in 1944 briefly became a teacher at the university.

She went on to earn a master's degree and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

They both graduated in May 1944 with first class honours in English language and literature.

Six months later, they obtained permission from Chief Justice of British Columbia Wendell B. Farris to marry, over the objections of Rodger's parents.

They had opposed the marriage because she was only nineteen and because they had never met Holger, as they were still in India.

After their marriage, the couple both became professors, teaching at the University of British Columbia for three years.

In 1948, Nygard received a Regent's Fellowship to study at the University of California, Berkeley, and Holger was hired as a teaching assistant in the English Department.

She earned her master's degree in 1949 and began work on her Ph.D. She was awarded a scholarship by the Canadian Federation of University Women in 1951 to study abroad in England, focusing on the works of James Anthony Froude.

The couple returned to the United States in 1953, when Holger was offered an assistant professorship at the University of Kansas in Lawrence to teach English and folklore courses.

After four years in Kansas, the couple moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1957, where Holger taught as an assistant professor of English.

During the years they were moving about the United States, the Nygards had four children — Jennifer, Stephen, Kerstin, and Erik — and Nygard completed her PhD from Berkeley, with her work on Froude in 1960.

In 1962, she and her family moved to Durham, North Carolina, and became aware of environmental threats to the Eno River.

In 1962, Holger became a full professor at Duke University and the following year, the family settled on the Eno River.

Nygard worked at Durham Technical Community College as an English teacher briefly.

The couple were active in protests against the Vietnam War.

A chemical spill from a traffic accident shortly after they moved killed a large number of fish in the river.

Concerned for the environment, their activism shifted focus.

In 1963, Nygard established a group of people to research the history of the surrounding river valley and in 1965, the Eno River Association was formed to address threats to the river.

The association was operated out of Nygard's kitchen for over twenty years and she served as president for its first decade.

She founded the Eno River Association in 1965, becoming its first president.

She naturalised as a United States citizen in 1993.

Spearheading the group, Nygard and the association pressed for the creation of the Eno River State Park, the City of Durham's West Point on the Eno, and the federally-owned Penny's Bend Nature Preserve, as well as a green belt linking local, state, and federal lands along the Eno River.

Taking actions to increase awareness of conservation and stop developers, they defeated plans to build a dam and reservoir, to construct high rise dwellings and housing tracts, and to locate a sewerage system, a major highway, and a landfill along the river.

On their own initiative, the Eno River Association, established ties with The Nature Conservancy, creating its the first conservancy project in the state.

During her work to prevent development on the Eno River, Nygard discovered the negatives of the photographer Hugh Mangum in a barn and worked with his family to donate his work for preservation to Duke University.

Nygard was the first recipient of both the Bartlett L. Durham Award of the Durham Historic Preservation Society and the Alexander Calder Conservation Award of The Conservation Fund for her work in preserving the wetlands and wildlife along the Eno.

The Eno River Association which she founded and led until her death has continued its work on the river, adding three additional parks and nature preserves to the green belt since her death.

The model Nygard developed has been replicated by other organizations in their attempts to preserve river habitats.

She was posthumously awarded one of North Carolina's highest civilian honors, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.