The National Audubon Society

The National Audubon Society was born of outrage at a fashion. In the late nineteenth century, the feathers and even whole stuffed birds that adorned women's hats had touched off a slaughter of wild birds, with hunters killing millions of egrets, herons, and songbirds for the millinery trade. State Audubon societies, named for the great bird painter John James Audubon, sprang up to stop it, and in 1905 they joined into a national society dedicated to protecting birds.

The society turned public sympathy into law. It campaigned successfully for the protection of wild birds, helping to win the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and the establishment of federal wildlife refuges, and it hired wardens to guard nesting colonies, one of whom was murdered by poachers. From guarding birds it broadened its mission to the protection of the habitats and ecosystems on which wildlife depends.

Audubon became a pillar of the American conservation movement. Its grassroots chapters spread birdwatching across the country, its annual Christmas Bird Count pioneered the citizen science of tracking wildlife populations, and it lent its scientific weight to later environmental battles, including the fight against the pesticide DDT that Rachel Carson made famous. It bridged the older conservation of Theodore Roosevelt's era and the modern environmental movement.

From a crusade to save birds from the milliner's needle, the National Audubon Society grew into one of the nation's enduring conservation organizations. Its history traces the widening of American environmental concern — from the protection of a single beautiful creature to the defense of the whole web of life — and the power of ordinary citizens organized around a cause.