Amelia Marguerite Baumgartner, 95, Athens, Ga., a former University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UW-SP) lecturer and Stevens Point area resident who was possibly the first person to warn of ground water contamination problems in Portage County, died Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004.

The body was cremated and cremains buried in Halstead, Kansas, next to the grave of her husband.

Memorials may be made to Oklahoma Ornithological Society, c/o William Carter, PO Box 2209, Ada, OK 74821-2209. The family can be contacted through Ted Baumgartner.

Bridges Funeral Home was in charge of the arrangements.

Mrs. Baumgartner was born Aug. 27, 1909, in New York, a daughter of the William and Amelia (Karle) Heydweiller. She spent her childhood in Rochester, N.Y.

She was a graduate of University of Rochester and received a doctorate in ornithology from Cornell University. She was reputed to be the first woman in the country to receive a doctorate in that subject.

She was married to Frederick M. Baumgartner. He died in 1996.

She taught at Oneonta State Normal School in New York, and they moved to Oklahoma State University in Ada, Okla., where her husband taught for 26 years and she taught nature short courses. In 1965 they moved to Stevens Point and she served as a visiting lecturer at UW-SP.

She wrote bird and nature articles for local and state papers for years, including the column, “Across the Footbridge” for the Stevens Point Daily Journal. The column was named for a bridge crossing the Little Plover River at the Baumgartner home. Her writing was the basis for her selection in 1974 as one of the first winners of Environmental Quality Awards given by the Midwest Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

While living here she was an activist on behalf of the environment. She served as president of the Citizens National Resources Association (CNRA), a state group that was largely responsible for a ban on the use of the pesticide DDT in Wisconsin.

She founded an organization called Portage County Preservation Projects, which called attention to aerial spraying abuses in central Wisconsin.

In 1973 students and faculty in the UW-SP College of Natural Resources named her the Central Wisconsin Environmentalist of the Year.

In 1975, she and her husband started Little Lewis Whirlwind Nature School and Sanctuary in Jay, Okla. She and her husband published “Oklahoma Bird Life” with the Oklahoma University Press in 1992.

They moved to Athens, Ga., in 1992.

Survivors include three sons, Ted A. Baumgartner, Athens, Ga.; William M. Baumgartner, Ridgefield, Wash., and Karl H. Baumgartner, Richmond, Texas; one daughter, Barbara M. MacAlpine, San Antonio; one sister, Mary Benson, Saranac Lake, N.Y.; and eight grandchildren.

She was also preceded in death by one granddaughter.