National Audubon Society, pressure to remove slave-owning naturalist’s name, keeps it

[David Lockmiller]

Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
March 15, 2023

The National Audubon Society, one of the country’s best-known bird conservation organizations, decided in a closed-door vote this week to retain the name of John James Audubon, famed 19th-century naturalist and wildlife illustrator who was also an unabashed enslaver.

The group’s namesake looms large in the world of birds. In the early 19th century, Audubon traveled around the North American wilderness to document the continent’s feathered life.

His vivid paintings of the ivory-billed woodpecker, American flamingo and hundreds of other species culminated in his seminal “Birds of America,” printed between 1827 and 1838.

He died in 1851 a world-famous wildlife artist and ornithologist. Even his critics acknowledge he is the “founding father of American birding.”