First printed 125 years in the past, Audubon’s predecessor, Chicken-Lore, held as its motto: “A fowl within the bush is price two within the hand.” It’s one {that a} lengthy lineage of editors ever since has carried by means of this journal in spirit, if not in letter. Chicken-Lore endeavored to rally its readers, the rising ranks of the very first Audubon societies, across the then-novel concept that higher worth lies in admiring birds in nature.
From the start, visuals have been a necessary instrument in that effort. Quantity 1 featured “photos truly taken within the subject” and warranted aspiring photographers they might discover “no extra pleasant and worthwhile method of spending leisure hours.” In 1904 and for the following 22 years, work by the acclaimed artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes ran as Chicken-Lore’s frontispiece, and after revolutionizing subject guides in 1934, illustrator Roger Tory Peterson grew to become the journal’s artwork director. So it appears becoming that on the journal’s quasquicentennial, it’s additionally the fifteenth anniversary of the Audubon Photography Awards, and the tenth anniversary of the Audubon Mural Project, two up to date initiatives that encourage a higher appreciation of birds by means of artwork.
With each the Nationwide Audubon Society and Audubon (as we’d finally turn into identified) elevating public consciousness, the prospects for species just like the Whooping Crane, hunted to near-extinction by the mid-1900s, improved dramatically. Different conservation issues stay intractable. “The Extra Deer Drawback” ran in our pages in 1943; at present, exploding populations of the herbivore nonetheless break habitat wanted by birds and different wildlife, as author Ashley Stimpson details.
Different conservation issues stay intractable.
And whereas the Audubon motion spurred protections that finally stemmed the tide of migratory fowl poaching in North America, poachers proceed to pose a dire menace to species the world over. In her characteristic story, Rachel Nuwer investigates a profitable unlawful songbird commerce within the Mediterranean—and the cultural shift, each in authorities and amongst shoppers, essential to cease it.
On this concern, we additionally elevate the alarm on one other sort of extinction disaster—one which, for our employees, hits near house. Maddie Burakoff reports on the fast shuttering of media shops that has left native information deserts in its wake. One troubling consequence: communities missing important data on environmental points that have an effect on them.
The Audubon of at present has a lot in widespread with the Chicken-Lore of yesterday but in addition some essential variations. Over time the journal shifted its focus from private essays to strong reporting on points that, on the daybreak of the trendy environmental motion, have been solely sparsely coated by the media—and within the course of, constructed a physique of journalism on subjects critically essential to each birds and folks. Whereas we will by no means substitute native newspapers, we nonetheless take severely our function delivering deeply informative tales to Audubon members and readers, wherever they reside. That’s additionally an concept that by no means will get outdated.
This piece initially ran within the Summer time 2024 concern. To obtain our print journal, turn into a member by making a donation today.