Animals: Bird Fight

Almost every school child knows the Audubon Societies, has given 10¢ to become a junior member and receive a button with a bird on it. The Audubon State Societies, founded in 1886 by Forest & Stream (monthly magazine), were united into a national organization 29 years ago by the late William Butcher, first president. Under his guidance until 1910, the societies became the strongest, most respected conservation power in the U. S. Therefore when accusations and complaints were heard last week coming from members of the old bird-loving society itself, observers were surprised. The dissenters demanded that the organization have a thorough dusting and airing immediately.

The intrepid insurgents call themselves the Emergency Conservation Committee. Members are Mrs. Charles Noel Edge, Manhattan socialite; Irving Brant of the St. Louis Star; Henry Carey, Philadelphia lawyer; Davis Quinn, Manhattan nature-lore writer. They prepared to make the meeting of the National Audubon Societies next week an explosive one by mailing to each director a copy of a pamphlet they had written: Compromised Conservation, Can the Audubon Society Explain? In it, they charged that under the direction of President Thomas Gilbert Pearson, who succeeded the upright Butcher, the Society has been shamefully catering to wealthy sportsmen and potent gun companies. They assert that President Pearson has in the name of Audubon* opposed a bill in Congress to form permanent bird refuges, favored instead the establishment of interchangeable refuges, which would some years be public shooting grounds. Most biting criticism came in regard to Dr. Pearson’s Bulletin No. 6 which was circulated among members requesting them to oppose the 15-bird Federal limit on wild ducks which went into force this year. Dr. William Temple Hornaday, famed zoological member, supported the Emergency Conservation Committee, sent a letter to Mrs. Edge. “Ever since 1923,” he wrote, “T. G. Pearson and a majority of the directors of the Audubon Society have been getting away with just the same as bird slaughter in supporting the organized and unorganized game-hogs of North America in their excessive killing privileges.”

Short, stout President Pearson has been in trouble with society members before. In 1910, shortly after he assumed virtual leadership, he accepted for the societies a $25,000 gift from Winchester Arms Co. Horrified bird lovers made him give it back. Since then subdued criticisms have been heard from time to time, occasional horrified ejaculations that a man with a gunner’s heart had crept into the Society, was perverting its policies. Last year a pamphlet signed by the late W. DeWitt Miller, vice president of the New Jersey Audubon Society, berated large bird societies for neglecting their duties. These charges, to which President Pearson turned an indifferent ear, are the direct cause of the present war.

*Barrel-chested John James Fougere Audubon (1785-1851), for whom the National Audubon Societies were named, spent the prime of his life in difficult travel throughout the land shooting, skinning, studying, sketching, reporting North American birds. In 1827 he published his great ornithological work Birds of America containing 500 of his famed bird drawings.