Human nature and âBeloved Beastsâ
How best can we protect and defend the same animal kingdom we endanger?
By Dan Cryer Globe Correspondent,Updated March 4, 2021, 2:38 p.m.
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On Oct. 29, 1929, at the annual meeting of the National Association of Audubon Societies [
sic], a hitherto-unknown upper-crust birdwatcher from Manhattanâs Upper East Side rose from the audience to address the societyâs directors. Rosalie Edge, a former suffragist, wasnât intimidated. As a writer in The New Yorker later noted, her habitual demeanor was âsomewhere between that of Queen Mary and a suspicious pointer.â
Why, she demanded, was the organization tacitly supporting the killing of bald eagles? The genteel gentlemen she faced dismissed her as impertinent and out of line. It was not until the mid-1930s that they changed their tune.