T. Gilbert Pearson's autobiography

Adventures in Bird Protection (1937) is Pearson's not too veiled apologia pro vita sua composed during the three years after his retirement from the National Association of Audubon Societies where he had been active almost from its inception in a senior position. I got the book on interlibrary loan because of some references made to Pearson in connection with controversial developments in the early 1930s in a history of the Am. Ornithol. Union.

When I started reading it I was immediately attracted to his story for reasons that have little to do with bird protection. His mother and other relatives had gone to Earlham College (the alma mater of my daughter and son in law) and P. studied at Guilford College where he was impressed by an older student, E. Wilson, who went on to teach at the Haverford School whose main building (when I began to teach there) was Wilson Hall. Unfortunately P's private life was all too soon obscured by his remarkable activities in bird protection. Equally unfortunate is the dryness of the recital of the indeterminable battles, from most of which P. emerged victorious. Last Sunday, Vernon Klinkenborg (NYT 2-22-09) cited Thoreau: "a truly good book is something as natural . . . as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West." Fortunately there are many more flowers on those prairies than there are good books and this autobiography turned out not to be one of them.

In his endeavours he not only met opposition from market hunters but also from members of the A.O.U. who feared that P. would eventually favor laws to stop collecting for scientific purposes [which reminded me of the Japanese arguments for continuing the killing of whales]. I found few factual errors, one of which is that my childhood hero Jac. P. Thijsse the Dutch naturalist, teacher and writer becomes a German born and bred (P. perhaps confused the name Thijsse with Thyssen - the coal and steel baron who early on financed Hitler's party). Another slip has P. travelling eastward from Verdun to places that are mostly to Verdun's west or the odd statement that the Netherlands' first nature reservation, Het Naardermeer lies between Amsterdam and the German frontier; it is only about 15 miles from Amsterdam, but the oddity lies in the fact that in my country nearly everything can be said to lie between Amsterdam and the German frontier. As an adopted southerner who forgot his Quaker roots, Pearson shows evidence of racism and he is not particularly "politically correct" when it comes to "old ladies in tennis shoes" unless they fork over money to the Aud. Assoc..

Opposition to P's legislative work also came from "sportsmen", that is gentlemen who favored protection of game birds and bag limits so that there would be game birds to hunt; with them a compromise was reached for ex. in the expansion of the National Wildlife Refuge System financed in part by the Duck Stamp Program. In 1934, the new NWR Director J.N. "ding" Darling got millions allocated from the government and he induced a fire arms company to provide $30,000 annually for research, teach wildlife management and restoration (365). Of course, many bird lovers -and not only "old ladies in tennis shoes"- object continued hunting in the NWRs. [It bothers me too: at Bombay Hook there are so many days set aside that it is difficult to find a good birding day that coincides with full access to the entire Wildlife Drive from December thru February].

Several times in his career opponents, anticipating Nixon's "dirty tricks" campaigning or Karl Rove's election strategies, tried to undermine Pearson's influence with attacks on his integrity. I have the impression that because such attacks in the early 1930s led to his retirement, he refers to earlier attacks that were clearly unfounded in some detail (e.g. p. 169) and he is at pains to lay out the income of an association and his own remuneration (e.g. p.174), though heis a bit disingenious when he says that in the 29 years that he worked for the Aud. Soc. he received "only 5%" of the Society's total income 0f 5 million, which to my reckoning comes to an average of more than 8.000 a year. Even in 1934 this was very good pay indeed, especially when his salary in 1911 was 3,000 and l934 must thus have been above the average. Twice he describes opportunities of working for other organizations at much higher salaries (232-235 and 342-343), which he rejected. His critics of the early 30s appear anonymously and in earlier contexts where they are described in phrases such as "Some well-meaning people, fond of referring to themselves in a rather exclusive way as 'bird-lovers' cried out against all 'sportsmen;'" (215) or "To-day the word 'conservation' is in wide use . . . conservation societies are everywhere . . ." (349). One of these was the Emergency Conservation Committee, co-founded by Rosalie Edge and to which I'll return below. He defends the Bureau of Biological Survey (now the Fish and Wildlife Dept) that administers the NWRs against the "popular pastime of throwing brickbats" (307, 310-311).

Pearson never refers to Mrs. Rosalie Edge and her associates (male and prominent in naturalist activities) by name. They took particular offence at what seemed to them a collusion between "sportsmen," the Aud. Soc. and the Bureau of Biol. Survey. One issue that riled the Emergency Committee was the trapping of 3,683 mink, 3,034 raccoons and 267.793 muskrats (Pearson's figures, 431) whose pelts were sold for about $40,000 for the benefit of the endowment of a preserve in Louisiana. Says Pearson: "A person without practical experience in such matters" could not understand the need for removing these animals for the well being of the preserve; "some people voiced objections" and in January of 1935 the Audubon Board (newly reconstituted and without Pearson) stopped the practice. The "persons without practical experience" who objected are earlier (420) referred to as engaged in "fierce debates" in which "acrimonious charges and counter charges were hurled" during an "era of bitter controversy."

The other point of conflict was Mrs. Edge's attempt to get the Aud. Soc. to acquire what became Hawk Mountain Sanctuary where I spent many happy days birding and received some very good introductions to American birds, beginning in 1964 when most were still "foreign" to me. I don't know whether the Society reject her suggestion to buy the land before or after she had founded the Emergency Committee and its criticism of the Louisiana "slaughter" described by her in an article called "The Audubon Steel-Trapping Sanctuary," but Mrs. Edge, who had been an active suffragette was not known for holding in her sharp tongue (a supporter is said to have been surprised to find out she actually was a "lady"), may well have defeated her own cause. In any case, she established the Sanctuary herself and hired Maurice and Irma Broun, two of the most sympathetic people I met (unfortunately after they had retired) "on the mountain" as curators. Among the bios on Google, one shows Mrs Edge with a companion hugging a pretty large tree out West: "tree huggers" before the term was invented.

It is unfortunate that Pearson didn't deal openly with the developments that led to his resignation, it appars to me a case of institutional malaise. It has been said that an institution is an idea at work but often the institution takes on a life of its own at the cost of the idea. It reminds me of Dostoievski's Grand Inquisitor who suggests that if Christ came back he would have to die again in order ot save the Church. The Nat. Aud. Society is not as exalted, but the early 1930s could have been a sad moment in its history nevertheless.