Harriet Hemenway: Our Lady in Birding

How a group of women who couldn't even vote led a conservation movement

Transcripts from this video:

Ernest Hemingway, feh. Go catch a fish, Papa. Tell us all about it later with your short little sentences after ruining your wife’s journalism career while the adults talk. Today I want to talk about a Hemenway. Harriet Hemenway, the savior of the snowy egret.

But first I’m going to have to tell you about the Age of Extermination. While this era, the end of the 19th century, is often focused on the eradication of the passenger pigeon and near complete extinction of dozens more birds due to post-Civil War population boom and economic prosperity, we can easily fit a few other things in there as well. In 1873 the United States government gave hunters free ammunition to overhunt bison for the sheer purpose of starving indigenous people (humans were also part of the age of extinction). The last herd left alive was in Yellowstone national park. Gray wolves were reduced from a population of perhaps half a million to around three hundred. In less than 100 years, 250,000 sea otter pelts were sold from the American west coastline, resulting in their near extinction. And the beavers, y’all. Don’t get me started on the beavers.

Today’s story, though, is about egrets. And it begins with a feather in the hat of one Marie Antoinette at a ball. Like an influencer doing a Shein haul, her fashion statement led to a fad on feathered hats which ushered in an age of environmental destruction. At one point egret feathers were literally worth twice their weight in gold. One London auction house, in one year, reported the sale of the feather equivalent of 200,000 snowy egrets. In one season one Cape Cod hunter killed over 40,000 terns. All for the status symbol of your wife wearing a bird on her head. Or in one case, 3,000 hummingbirds.

Which brings us to our lady in birding Harriett Hemenway, the daughter of abolitionists and proof that nobody has to be “a product of their time.” Hemenway recruited her cousin Mina Hall in what is perhaps the first national-scale environmental protection movement in the United States. And they did it with tea parties. These tea parties soon became the Massachusetts Audubon Society, which then became the National Audubon Society, because Hemenway knew that the best way for women to get something done is to name their organization after a man. Even though of the 111 Audubon chapters started in Massachusetts, 105 of them were founded by women. All this occurred a quarter century before white women would even be able to vote.

Soon aigrettes became known as the “white badge of cruelty,” so-called “Audobonnets” made from ribbon instead of feathers came into fashion, and the world-famous German opera singer Lili Lehmann would only grant autographs to fans if they promised not to wear feather hats. If Sabrina Carpenter can get us all pronouncing espresso correctly, imagine what she could do for red cockaded woodpeckers.

Social pressure became political pressure, and the Lacey Act was passed. Theodore Roosevelt dedicated the first Federal Bird Reservation on Pelican Island. This would go on to become the 570+ property National Wildlife Refuge System that today protects over 95 million acres of land and over 700 million acres of water. The Lacey Act was succeeded by the Weeks-McLean law, sponsored of course by the Massachusetts senator, which led to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. This international treaty is credited with the recovery of countless birds, and because birds are wonderful indicator species of healthy habitats, and untold additional numbers of species. Snowy egrets have recovered their original range and then some, one of the remarkable recovery stories of American wildlife.

Today, the meme puppy agency has decimated the workforce at already underfunded National Wildlife Refuges, and portions of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act were weakened just this week, with more to come. When the going gets tough, etcetera. It reminds me of the saying an acquaintance of mine has on her office wall by anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

It’s time for some tea parties.

Sources:

Harriet Hemenway, FWS

How the Snowy Egret was Saved, Institute for Community Solutions

Hats Off To Women Who Saved The Birds, NPR

Keeping Feathers Off Hats–and On Birds, Smithsonian Magazine

Follow up for Patreon Deeper Dive text:

There was so much to talk about in the Harriet Hemenway post, which was already too long for an instagram video, that I feel like I barely scraped the surface. I think there will be more videos about it that I may break down into multiple 3 minute pieces to satisfy the algorithm overlords, but in the meantime here’s an exclusive little glimpse into some of the things I learned.

First of all, a small correction. In that video I said that Hemenway started the Audubon society, which is not precisely correct. The Audubon Society was started by George Bird Grinnell in 1886. At one point there were 300 chapters and 18,000 members. He hoped to fund the organization with Audubon Magazine. The original organization was not able to support itself, and in three years disappeared.

Roughly ten years later our lady of birding (I am going to try to make this stick) Harriet Hemenway revived the Audubon Society when she founded the Massachusetts Audubon. This led to the formation of a national committee of Audubon societies in 1905 and a National Audubon Society in 1940. Though true to their new englander reputation, the Mass Audubon remains independent. The statewide network manages 100 wildlife sanctuaries where over 150 endangered and threatened species live.

Ok, that’s good, I feel better getting that fixed. Next let’s talk about another Massachusetts birder. I’ve never been to Mass by the way and that’s making me sad. Not only is their state bird the black-capped chickadee but two of the most foundational environmental movements in north america can be traced to one little state. Is it little? Every state seems kind of small in the East to me.

Anyway, in the 1950s a Duxbury, Massachusetts woman named Olga Owens Huckins noticed that the private bird sanctuary she’d converted her land to was not as busy with birds as they were. She documented bird deaths on the property and wondered if it had to do with the mosquito spraying efforts. She wrote a letter ot the Boston Herald, and sent a copy to a friend she knew in the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That friend? Abraham Lincoln.

I’m just kidding, it was Rachel Carson. Carson said this letter inspired her to write Silent Spring. Silent Spring is credited with what may be the most profound environmental movement in history. Between finishing her manuscript and publishing the book, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Even still, and in spite of a massive campaign by both the pesticide industry and the US Government, Silent Spring went on to lead to the foundation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the banning of DDT. This ban and some grassroots efforts by falconers and other bird policy has led to a massive resurgence in bird populations, especially among birds of prey. Carson succumbed to her cancer two years later in 1964, but her influence is unmistakable. In a few more years other absolute pillars of environmental policy were signed, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Council on Environmental Quality. The Clean Air Act soon followed in 1970, two years later we got the Clean Water Act, and then the Federal Insecticide, fungicide, and rodenticide act, Then in 1973 the Endangered Species Act was signed.

Not bad for a woman the then secretary of state and later Mormon prophet Ezra Taft Benson dismissed as “probably a communist,” when he said, “Why is a spinster with no children so concerned about genetics?”

Today every Act I listed is under the greatest attack since they were signed. It does raise a question for me, though, which is why is it that the people most obsessed with children and having more of them are simultaneously the ones who care the least about whether those children have trees to climb and clean air to breath?