Audubon
A Century of Commitment to Waterfowl

Audubon and waterfowl have been intertwined since our inception at the turn of the century. One of our earliest campaigns resulted in the establishment of the National Wildlife Refuge System which protects many of the continent's greatest waterfowl areas. President Theodore Roosevelt, in partnership with Audubon leaders, set up the National Wildlife Refuge System by Executive Order; and, in doing so, we were able to protect places like Klamath Basin and Malheur in the West, the Yukon Delta in Alaska and the migratory wintering grounds of the Gulf Coast. When Congress would not appropriate funds to manage these new Wildlife Refuges, Audubon stepped in and hired wardens to protect the waterfowl and water birds. Many conservationists do not know that the first wardens who were hired to protect waterfowl and water birds were Audubon's wardens and not federal wardens.

More recently, Audubon's waterfowl conservation initiatives have included taking the lead in establishing the waterfowl conservation components of the Conservation Reserve Program, the Wetlands Reserve Program, and Swampbuster. We have also been in the forefront of protecting North Dakota's Prairie Potholes, the so-called "mid-continent duck factory" from the ill-advised Garrison Diversion Reclamation project; securing the cooperation of Alaska's indigenous people in support of the Arctic Nesting Goose Conservation Initiative and protecting some of the finest waterfowl marshes of the Atlantic Flyway with the establishment of Audubon sanctuaries in the Currituck Sound of North Carolina and the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay.

Audubon has a great history of involving some of the nation's most committed environmental leaders in waterfowl conservation -- at the Board, Staff and Chapter levels. We are rightfully proud of the role we have been able to play in conserving waterfowl and their habitats, and we pledge to continue that extraordinarily important commitment.

Donal C. O'Brien, Jr. Chairman
National Audubon Society

The National Audubon Society came into the world with wet feet. Watery places have been part of its substance ever since. Take, for instance, the Chandler family of Central Florida's Kissimmee Prairie. For more than 60 years a succession of Chandlers guarded local Audubon wetlands and their birdlife. Near the end of his career in the late 1980s, Audubon warden Rod Chandler came across a picture of his uncle Marvin in one of the Society's publications from a half-century earlier.

"The way Marvin's pictured there makes me homesick for him,'' Rod said wistfully in his Cracker drawl. "He had on those high lace-up boots -- he was a long-legged rascal -- that he'd wear when he figured on working out in the water. He had to protect himself you know from the snakes and ticks and insects that you get out there. This book showed him on a boardwalk and it says, 'A warden is essential to any refuge.'"

The responsibilities of preserving and managing wetlands are no less arduous today than when a warden risked taking a bullet in the back from an aggrieved poacher. Modern threats to wetlands and their wild plants and animals are more subtle, while they come from a variety of sources that blanket vast areas of the country. An Audubon guardian at the end of this century requires many skills in addition to apprehending transgressors of the game laws. They include expertise in:

• Wildlife biology
• Land management
• Lobbying Congress and state legislatures
• Monitoring public agencies
• Environmental education
• Fundraising
• Land acquisition
• Wetlands restoration
• Chapter and community relations

But getting one's feet wet is still part of the job.

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