A Century of Conservation:
Audubon Celebrates 100 Years in North Carolina
By Chris Canfield, Executive Director
In March 2002,Audubon North Carolina will celebrate the centennial of the Audubon movement in the state. The luminary figure of those early, groundbreaking years was T. Gilbert Pearson. Pearson’s work shaped the state’s and the nation’s conservation agenda. His example resonates into today as Audubon looks to its next 100 years in North Carolina.
On the evening of March 11, 1902, almost 200 people gathered in the chapel of North Carolina’s State Normal and Industrial College, later to become UNC-Greensboro. They had come to hear a young professor and conservation advocate, Thomas Gilbert Pearson, speak passionately about the need to protect North Carolina’s birds. Elegant egrets, stately herons, and many other species were being slaughtered in huge numbers by market hunters for their decorative plumes, used on hats and in other fashions. Still others, unprotected by law, suffered from indiscriminate killing. So moved was the audience by this 28-year-old speaker that 148 people signed up that night to form the Audubon Society of North Carolina. "This is going to be a big organization and do a lot of good in the state, and you cannot afford not to be identified with it," Pearson wrote to one friend in Chapel Hill. The organization’s goals were clear: educate people, young and old, about the intrinsic value of birds; effect legislation to protect birds; and carry out on-the-ground conservation through bird study, sanctuaries, and wildlife wardens.
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HE FORCE OF NATUREWho was this moving force of nature
who shaped our organization so? T. Gilbert Pearson was born in Illinois in 1873 into a Quaker family. They moved to Archer, Florida, and Pearson spent his youth scrambling through brush and climbing trees in search of wildlife. Birds captured his imagination early. He became a prodigious, collector of birds and eggs, back when that was what bird study often meant. Passionate to advance his formal knowledge but lacking the financial resources for schooling, Pearson hit upon one of his typically entrepreneurial ideas. He wrote and offered to donate his extensive collections to any college that would offer him tuition, room and board in exchange. Greensboro’s Guilford College took him up on the offer. He arrived in 1891 and received two years of preparatory education. Through other trades for teaching skills and research work, he managed to gain two undergraduate degrees: one from Guilford and the other from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was teaching at the State Normal College and writing about bird conservation when William Dutcher, chairman of the American Ornithologists’ Union bird protection committee asked Pearson to take the lead in North Carolina for the fledgling Audubon movement. The March 1902 meeting was Pearson’s first step.S
OUTH’ S FIRST GAME COMMISSIONUnder Pearson’s guidance, North Carolina became a leading example of the Audubon agenda in the region. In 1903, almost exactly a year after starting the Society, a bill to protect wild birds was introduced in the North Carolina House of Representatives. Pearson addressed the body and spoke eloquently enough to turn a skeptical crowd into a virtual unanimous supporter of what came to be known as the Audubon Act. Bird protection of the kind proposed was unique in its own right. But the legislation also established the Audubon Society as the authorized agent of the government for enforcing all game laws, not just those related to birds. Thus came about the South’s first statewide game commission. Wardens were hired by Audubon under the approval of the governor. Proceeds from the sale of licenses to non-resident hunters paid their modest wages. By 1909, there were 100 Audubon wardens at work across the state. People like N.F. Jennett who patrolled Audubon’s coastal sanctuaries at Royal Shoal and Legged Lump, located in Pamlico Sound near Ocracoke. And Durham’s John Watson Dowd, who looked after the Piedmont area. Besides enforcing the laws, these wardens were also charged with educating the public. When it became clear that, while successful, the Audubon warden system was best handled as a dedicated state function, Audubon’s Pearson pushed for that legislative change. A 1927 act gave rise to what is now the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.
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EADER OF GLOBAL PROPORTIONSIn 1912,T. Gilbert Pearson left North Carolina for New York to lead the National Association of Audubon Societies he helped found in 1905. He helped pass the national "Migratory Bird Treaty Act" of 1918, considered by many the most important single piece of legislation to protect wildlife. He became known internationally for his efforts to link conservation programs across the equator and around the globe. Pearson also built the Junior Audubon program until it was enrolling hundreds of thousands of young students across the country each year. In one way or another, he never stopped teaching. Though he lived in New York until his death in September 1943, Pearson always considered North Carolina his home. His wife Elsie Weatherly was a local girl helped. He shared a lifelong friendship with H. H. Brimley of NC State Museum of Natural History fame. Together with Brimley’s brother, Clement, Pearson and
H. H. produced the Birds of North Carolina (1919; revised 1942). It was just one of many influential publications he authored. Pearson returned to the state and its natural wonders every chance he got. Auduboners in North Carolina, and indeed all citizens of the state, owe a debt of gratitude to T. Gilbert Pearson. As H. H. Brimley said, "Yes, we shall miss Gilbert Pearson. Men of his stamp are not every day creations."Watch for the second part of this series in our next newsletter. We will look at more recent history of Audubon in North Carolina, including the vital work of chapters and a revived sanctuary program.
Additional reading on Pearson and the early years:
12 CHAPTERS AND VOLUNTEERS
14 ADVOCACY