NYC Audubon Society changing ‘white supremacy’ legacy name

They’re bidding it Audo-bon voyage.

After months of deliberation, the New York City Audubon Society decided to change its name, citing founder John James Audubon’s legacy of white supremacy.

The ornithology organization announced the bombshell development on its website and in an email sent to members.

“NYC Audubon’s Board of Directors has today announced its decision to change the organization’s name, dropping ‘Audubon,’” NYC Audubon’s executive director Jessica Wilson wrote in the email to supporters.

She added that the nonprofit would be beginning a process to develop a new name that “embodies our organizational values” and is “inclusive and welcoming to all New Yorkers.”

The Audo-ban marked the culmination of an eight-month-long assessment that deemed founder John James Audubon’s name a “barrier to entry for many into the organization.”

While the nonprofit acknowledged that the naturalist’s contributions to ornithology are “significant” and fostered “an appreciation of nature and conservation ethos” in the US, they deemed his views and actions toward black people and indigenous people “harmful and offensive.”

While they didn’t list his specific problematic views, the naturalist’s family owned enslaved people during the early part of the 19th century. Audubon was also infamously critical of the abolitionist moment on both sides of the pond. In an 1834 letter to his wife Lucy Bakewell Audubon, Audubon declared that the British government had “acted imprudently and too precipitously” in emancipating enslaved people in its West Indian possessions.

Naturally, Audubon grappled with the potential cost of jettisoning the name of the org, which has amassed 10,000 members since its founding in 1979, the New York Times reported.

Audubon also services thousands more birders with its world-renowned bird walks, talks and other free programs. The Audubon name also has deep roots in New York City as Audubon and his family lived in a clapboard house along the Hudson River in the 1840s in what is modern-day Washington Heights.

However, Wilson ultimately decided that “symbols matter.”

“They matter in our efforts to engage New Yorkers with birds, nature, and conservation,” she declared. “They matter in the commitment we’ve had for a long time to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility.”

“We are an urban conservation organization and we need to reflect the diversity of the City and the values of the community, which we share,” seconded Karen Benfield, NYC Audubon board president “North American bird populations have dropped by nearly a third since 1970 and that is a crisis.”

She added, “To protect them we need wide support, as many voices as possible, and that is not served by having a name that is divisive and has such deeply negative connotations for so many, both within and outside of our organization.”

NYC Audubon has not yet decided on a new title for the nonprofit. However, they sought to “collect input from our wide audience” in an effort “to identify a name that feels inclusive and welcoming to all New Yorkers.”

Rebranding campaign notwithstanding, Benfield vowed that Audubon’s campaign to conserve Gotham’s birdlife hasn’t changed.

“We remain committed to protecting wild birds and their habitat across the five boroughs, engaging all New Yorkers in that work, to shape a healthier and more sustainable city for birds and for people,” she wrote.

With the prospective makeover, NYC joins other chapters that are mulling an image overhaul, including branches in Seattle, Madison, Portland, Chicago and Washington D.C.

Interestingly, these subsidiary decisions go against the parent nonprofit National Audubon Society, which voted to keep its title last week on the grounds that “the organization transcends one person’s name.”

“Each chapter has the autonomy and authority to determine their name to best serve their needs,” Elizabeth Gray, National Audubon Society chief executive officer, declared in a Tuesday statement. “We will continue to support and work closely with chapters and move forward as one unified community.”

Racism in the ornithology world reared its head in 2020 after dogwalker Amy Cooper called the police on NYC Audubon board member Christian Cooper (no relation), 59, who is black, while he was birding in Central Park. The woman, who was since dubbed “Central Park Karen,” had falsely accused him of threatening her when he asked her to keep her cocker spaniel on a leash.

NYC Audubon isn’t the first storied Big Apple institution to revamp their image in the name of inclusion.

Last year, the city sparked outrage online after removing a statue of Theodore Roosevelt that had stood in front of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan for more than 80 years.