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Unraveling the Dynamics of Western Attitudes towards Avian Conservation
By Lucy Ingram
I work as a monitor for the Bird Friendly Campus research project. This is an initiative led by Ph.D. student Judy Bowes that aims to protect birds around the University of Washington campus by assessing bird collisions with buildings. The project is closely related to the Seattle Bird Collision Monitoring Project sponsored by Birds Connect Seattle, formerly the Seattle Audubon Society. Birds Connect Seattle is one of several chapters of the National Audubon Society which have vowed to change their name. In March of 2023, however, the National Audubon Society announced its decision to keep its name despite the troubled history of its namesake, John James Audubon. One of the reasons the National Audubon Society has cited for this is that the Audubon name “has come to represent so much more than the work of one person," (NPR, 2023).
There is certainly some truth to this: The Audubon Society and countless other avian conservation groups in the United States have expanded their missions considerably since they were first founded. Urbanization and climate change, the two leading forces behind avian population decline today, were not even in the realm of consideration at the turn of the 20th century. In addition, the very attitudes and understandings that underlie Western conservation practices have changed drastically. From the late 19th to the 21st century, a gradual yet drastic reevaluation of the relationship between human civilization and the natural environment took place in the United States. Whereas human and environmental processes were once viewed as separate spheres with few areas of overlap, technological advancement and rapid urbanization simultaneously fed into these apparent divisions and revealed the reciprocality between them. This increasingly complicated understanding of human and natural systems is not only visible in the progression of avian conservation efforts throughout the past 150 years, it was also significantly shaped by them.
To understand the beginning of Western avian conservationism and the Audubon Society name, we first have to understand who John James Audubon was. Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 which doubled the size of the United States, westward expansion introduced American settlers to a variety of unfamiliar flora and fauna. This was the setting in which a young John James Audubon, then known as Jean-Jacques Fougère Audubon, would be sent to from France by his father in order to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Wars. A naturalist, hunter, and artist, Audubon spent the most notable years of his life working towards the creation of a pictorial record of every bird species in North America. His contributions to the field of ornithology are undoubtedly substantial. Nevertheless, he was also an enslaver whose endeavors were supported by acts of violence. This was evident not only in his procurement of funding through the slave trade but also in the methods he employed, which typically involved killing and posing birds for his paintings.
Photo: John James Audubon
Eric Russell situates Audubon’s work within the context of 19th century Romanticism, an artistic, literary, and philosophical movement characterized by a promotion of individualism and the exploration of intense emotion, especially as a way to find truth. In particular, American Romanticism asserts a belief in the sublime, which could be found in natural landscapes untouched by Western hands. In his writing, Audubon simultaneously emphasizes the divinity of nature and maintains that he has a claim to it (Russell, 2019).
Russell utilizes Bruno Latour’s conception of modernity as a two-part process to explain Audubon’s sentiment towards conservation despite his justifications for violence. Latour’s modernity consists of both the process of “purification,” by which human society is made distinct from the processes of nature, and the process of “translation,” which draws connections between humanity and nature: thus addressing both the sophistications and limits of human consciousness (Latour, 1993, as cited in Russell, 2019). Audubon engages in purification through the rhetorical processes of separating “man” from “nature,” or rather, placing “man” over “nature” by giving him the power to judge what is worthy of life and what is not. Yet he simultaneously engages in translation through his efforts to create sympathy with birds by providing descriptions of their suffering. In one anecdote from his Ornithological Biography, Audubon shoots down a white ibis in a Louisiana swamp. When it falls into the water, its thrashing attracts alligators, which come to try and eat the bird. Mortified by the ibis’s struggle, Audubon shoots the alligators and rescues the bird, nurses it back to health, and eventually releases it back into the swamp. He notes that the bird, “as if in gratitude, walked to our very feet, and there lying down, surrendered itself to us,” (OB: 3:178, as cited in Russell, 2019). Audubon elicits sympathy for the bird by describing it in such a humanlike way: Being capable of both suffering and gratitude, the ibis is worthy of compassion. However, Audubon only offers grace to this bird after it is almost killed by the alligators - thus morally positioning himself over them by demonstrating his ability to reason and empathize. Russell describes Audubon as a
“true modern Romantic,” a man who both found beauty in the natural world and yet wanted so badly to control it (Russell, 477).
Audubon and many other conservationists at the time believed in the inherent beauty of nature, but also in their inherent right to determine what was and was not worthy of protection, and under what circumstances. More often than not, this worthiness was determined by money. The most prominent conservation groups were male-dominated, with many leading members having connections with hunters, timber companies, pesticide manufacturers, and government bureaucrats. As such, leading officials frequently made deals to determine which species and what land would be protected, and which would be sold (Audubon, n.d.).
According to Minichiello (2004), increases in wealth and leisure, along with the expansion of railroads, led to a boom in sport hunting and allowed for birds hunted further west to be sold in markets along the East Coast in the late 19th century. A colossal number of waterfowl and songbirds were also killed for the millinery trade (which had significant markets in New York). Some states began to implement a Model Law proposed by the American Ornithologists Union which divided birds into game and nongame species and permitted only the hunting of game species. However, federal imposition of the Model Law was shot down by commercial collectors who believed this law would restrict their work (Minichiello, 2004). Regulations protecting game species found widespread approval as hunters wanted to ensure the sustainable preservation of birds as a valuable resource. Conservation efforts not directly linked to an economic argument were much more difficult to achieve legally.
In 1896, Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall advocated for a boycott in Boston against feathers and created an educational organization that would have over 1,000 members by its first year (Audubon, n.d.). This organization became the first Audubon Society. Hemenway and Hall took this name from naturalist George Bird Grinnell’s publication, Audubon Magazine, which inspired their work. However, Audubon himself had already been dead for multiple decades before Grinnell’s magazine. Other Audubon Societies were soon established across the United States, led in large part by other women who convinced their local communities not to buy hats or other garments made from feathers.
The National Audubon Society became incorporated in 1905 and, by 1910, essentially ended the plume trade through the Audubon Plumage Bill. This bill, which was enacted by the state of New York, outlawed the importation of parts from any birds in the same taxonomic families as those protected in the state. However, New York had already implemented the Model Law, meaning that essentially no nongame birds could be imported to the state (Minichiello, 2004). The Audubon Plumage Bill was a considerable success for avian conservation. Not only did it end the plume trade, but it did so by emphasizing the intrinsic value of birds rather than their economic value. No less significant is the fact that the bill was largely fought for by women and non-leading members of the organization. Unfortunately, this single victory did not undermine the larger profit incentive still present in conservation at the time.
Photo: A 'chill duck' seen by author, Lucy Ingram at Drumheller Fountain on the University of Washington Campus during research for this article (2024).
Author Dyana Z. Furmansky credits Rosalie Barrow Edge as one of the leading forces behind changing avian conservation as we know it. Edge, a suffragist during the fight to ratify the 19th Amendment, applied both the skills and tenacity she developed as a women’s rights activist towards exposing corruption in her later years. She uncovered the types of deals that conservation organizations were making and created the Emergency Conservation Committee in 1929, which distributed hundreds of pamphlets detailing underhanded conservation practices and dispelled common myths that were used to justify the slaughter of certain animal species. In addition to her fight against corruption, Edge purchased 1,400 acres of land along the Blue Ridge Mountain range in Pennsylvania in 1934. Known as Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, this area became the first refuge for birds of prey (Furmansky, 2010).
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was also the site where Rachel Carson collected data on raptor migration that would lead her to write Silent Spring (1962). Silent Spring exposed how the rapid development and use of synthetic pesticides contributed to environmental poisoning; more specifically, how the accumulation of biotoxins in raptors led them to produce eggs with weaker shells which were less likely to survive (Lear, 1993). Carson’s report demonstrated how human systems not immediately related to the death of a species, such as hunting and clearing habitat space, can still harm them indirectly. This brought attention to the fact that humans, animals, and plants share one ecosystem, undermining the idea that the “wilderness” is something that we have the power to keep separate from us.
The relationship between human society and the natural environment became more complicated as conservationists began to turn their attention towards the impact of urban development on avian health in the late 1970s. Daniel Klem Jr. 's 1979 dissertation and following 1990 study into bird collisions with buildings is widely regarded as the first real investigation into the subject. Klem utilized both observational and experimental studies to determine whether windows and large glass facades significantly contributed to bird deaths, identify what other factors influenced collisions (Klem, 1979;1990), and evaluate methods of preventing collisions (Klem, 1990). Klem was one of the first individuals to push for the issue of collision mortality to be taken seriously in the world of research. Today, it is widely understood that a variety of factors in relation to urban design (glass area, type, height, building orientation, surrounding vegetation, amount, hue, and placement of light fixtures, etc.) contribute to collision fatalities (Loss et al., 2014). We also know that the processes of urbanization impact local bird populations in a variety of other ways, including disruptions in species evenness, changes to food webs, and speciation (Isaksson, 2018).
In Judy Bowes’ comparisons of her own research on urbanization to research from 50 years ago, she has seen how conceptions of nature, boundaries, dominance, and responsibility have persisted or transformed over time. “One fact I like to make clear is that there are very few places on the earth where humans have not built something or spaces that have been so developed that we can’t find a plant or animal; we are very much a part of ecosystems around us but with increased urbanization since the ‘70s it may appear there is a very clear divide between the two.” (Judy Bowes, personal communication, Mar. 3, 2024). Green spaces within urban environments are heavily compartmentalized, appearing in the form of parks or zoos. This can make it feel as if we as humans have created these green spaces, when the reality is that all of what we stand on was formerly a green space. These assumptions also suggest that Western ideas about human dominance over nature have not changed, in spite of a growing self-awareness. The notion of a “designated” green space itself, whether as a place downtown or as a national park miles away, reveals our enduring tendency to try and control where nature is and “isn’t.” However, Judy believes that birds have been central to breaking the perceived existence of these boundaries. Birds have repeatedly been the subject through which we have studied how humans are inseparably connected to our natural environment, both through destructive as well as constructive processes. “Since the earliest civilizations, humans have been closely connected to nature, birds specifically, making the human expanse very much intertwined with the natural world. And not just for food and resources but are crucial to our culture, self-expression, and well-being.” (Judy Bowes, personal communication, Mar. 3, 2024).
Returning to our initial inquiry regarding the Audubon Society name: Is it better to memorialize a name by giving it an updated meaning that is far removed from its original owner, or to change the name completely in order to more accurately express our current values and beliefs? This is somewhat of a leading question as I personally stand with Birds Connect Seattle’s decision. However, irrespective of personal opinion, the extensive debate surrounding the name highlights our collective efforts to recognize the oversights and missteps of the past and progress towards a more self-reflective cultural perspective in which we can identify divisions between nature and civilization, whether physical or metaphysical, as human constructions. It is difficult to predict how our perceived relationship with our environment will continue to change over the next 30 years. However, I believe that if we can continue forward on a path that not only recognizes, but begins to celebrate, the interdependence between humans and our fellow species on this planet, we will arrive at an understanding which is stronger than any we have had before.
22 March 2024
22 March 2024
References:
References:
Chappell, Bill. (2023). Audubon faces a backlash after deciding to keep name that evokes a racist enslaver. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1164293652/audubon-faces-a-backlash-after-deciding-to-keep-name-that-evokes-a-racist-enslav#:~:text=The%20organization%20cited%20two%20main,much%20more%20than%20the%20work
Russell, E. (2019). Modern Violence: Animal Studies, Speciesism, and the Writings of John James Audubon. ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 65(3), 470-510. https://doi.org/10.1353/esq.2019.0012.
Minichiello, J. K. (2004). The Audubon Movement: Its Origins, Its Conservation Context, And Its Initial Accomplishments. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 90(2), 30–44. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24531344
Furmansky, Dyana. (2010). Getting Over Rosalie. Audubon Center for Birds of Prey. https://www.audubon.org/news/getting-over-rosalie
Rosalie Barrow Edge - Feminist, Naturalist and Conservationist. Audubon Center for Birds of Prey. (2021). https://cbop.audubon.org/news/rosalie-barrow-edge-feminist-naturalist-and-conservationist
Lear, L. J. (1993). Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” Environmental History Review, 17(2), 23–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/3984849
Klem, Daniel. (1990). Collisions Between Birds and Windows: Mortality and Prevention. Journal of Field Ornithology, 61(1): 120-128.
https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/jfo/v061n01/p0120-p0128.pdf
Scott R. Loss, Tom Will, Sara S. Loss, Peter P. Marra. (2014). "Bird–building collisions in the United States: Estimates of annual mortality and species vulnerability," The Condor, 116(1): 8-23
Isaksson, Caroline. (2018). Impact of Urbanization on Birds. In: Tietze, D. (eds) Bird Species (pp. 235-257). Fascinating Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91689-7_13
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