9: Instilling the Word

In November of 1996, thousands of school children in North America and the United Kingdom took part in three days of live electronic field trips during an Audubon television broadcast called "Wild Wings: Headed South."

This transatlantic natural history broadcast introduced students to the spectacle of migration. They followed Snow Geese, Sandhill Cranes, and Whooper and Bewick's Swans from their nesting grounds through the perils of passage to their winter homes. Here in North America, they also got to know in particular ten Snow Geese, tagged with radio satellite colors by John Takekawa and his colleagues in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Children on two continents came to experience migration as they never had before. They were treated to close-ups of waterfowl in migratory patterns with age-old significance in their own areas, the birds' wetland habitats (Bosque del Apache was a featured site), and the pervasive effects on migration of weather and climate.

The project had many components. Audubon made classroom materials available so that children could study the phenomenon of migration in greater detail. A new interactive website allowed them to keep track of the tagged geese on their own computers as they flew north in spring. The whole was designed to make children aware of the hazards of migration, the value of "rest stops," or refuges, and the roles habitat and weather play in waterfowl conservation.

Ultimately, all of Audubon's programs have been summed up in the word "education." From the beginning, the Society's leaders set out to teach and persuade--forcibly, perhaps, in the case of market hunters and other malefactors, and through sound information and reasoning in the case of legislators and public opinion generally.

But there has always been a recognition that the best way to bring people of all kinds under the conservation banner is to capture hearts and minds at an early age. Junior Audubon Clubs were at the core of the organization's educational initiative for many years. A few oldtimers still fondly recall the bird charts and portraits, mounted on rollers, which the early Audubon Societies distributed to classrooms. Small boys and girls cherished the bird pictures and club buttons handed out to them.

The development in recent years of the "Audubon Adventures" program has reached out in new ways to children. At least half a dozen times throughout the school year local chapters arrange for each child in the participating classes to receive a copy of the program's newspaper, with a guide for teachers. Special issues and posters, membership cards and bird counts, keep children aware of the wild world around them.

Many tools were devised to enlist adults in the Audubon cause. The Society's magazine, Audubon, has been recognized as a beautiful yet authoritative publication that illuminates both natural history and environmental issues. The Society's film department, with documentaries (such as "Ducks Under Siege") hosted by movie and television stars, has won critical acclaim for its productions. "Boot camps" and other training sessions instruct activists not only in vital issues but also in the techniques of dealing with legislators, local officials, and the media.

There is an old story about a small boy from the city who went on a class outing and got his first close look at a duck. "Look," he called to his teacher. "That boid ain't got no between-the-toes!"

There were obviously stirring in that child the beginnings of observation and wonder. That's what Audubon strives through its message to instill in people of all ages, rather than to bring about instant conversions by raising fears they will get cancer, or produce babies with more than the acceptable number of toes and heads.

Horror stories may goad outraged citizens into fits of check-writing, even activism, but an enduring environmental movement will never be built on fear. The child in all of us who truly looks and wonders at a healthy duckling, at a pristine marsh under a red-streaked sunrise, or a dazzling sweep of subarctic coast may blossom into the kind of conservationist who stays the course.

Sunset on the Marsh
by Tupper Blake