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THE AOU AND BIRD CONSERVATION: RECOMMITMENT TO THE REVOLUTION

EXACTLY 100 YEARS ago, with North America in full-fledged environmental crisis, prominent members of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) participated in major political and social upheaval. A century of unrestrained exploitation had reached catastrophic proportions, with Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) and Eskimo Curlews (Numerius borealis) representing only the tip of an iceberg. Birds as diverse as parakeet, egrets, ducks, terns, and plovers were plummeting in numbers. AOU leaders, led by one of the union’s founders and first editor of The Auk (J. A. Allen), had argued publicly and lobbied privately alongside civic leaders to establish the continent’s first wildlife protection laws and to monitor their consequences. Based on those efforts, the conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt would create over 50 national wildlife refuges by executive order and sign dozens of bills containing conservation statutes before leaving office. Today, we take for granted both the birth of the conservation movement and the crucial roles of government and scientists within it. A hundred years ago that was the stuff of revolution, and the AOU was intimately involved. Does the revolution continue? Yes, of course it does. Infrastructure, laws, resources, and even professional scientific societies dedicated to conservation of biological diversity continue to grow stronger by the year. The question is,