Rosalie Edge
Encyclopedia
Rosalie Barrow Edge was a New York socialite, suffragist, and amateur birdwatcher who in 1929 established the Emergency Conservation Committee to expose the conservation establishment’s ineffectiveness, and strongly advocate for species preservation. In 1934 Edge also founded the world's first preserve for birds of prey — Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
near Kempton, Pennsylvania. During the Great Depression
, Edge was considered the United States' most militant conservationist
(Hawk of Mercy). In 1948, a profile of her in The New Yorker
described her as "the only honest, unselfish, indomitable hellcat in the history of conservation" (New Yorker, April 17, 1948).
on November 3, 1877, the youngest of five surviving children of John Wylie Barrow and Harriet Bowen Woodward Barrow. John Wylie Barrow, a wealthy British importer and accountant, was a first cousin to Charles Dickens
.
In May 1909, 32-year-old Mabel Rosalie went to Yokohama
, Japan to marry Charles Noel Edge, a British civil engineer. After traveling in Asia for about three years in connection with Charles's employment, the Edges returned to New York permanently. Their children Peter and Margaret were born in New York (Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy).
(Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy).
in the 1920s, when she joined ornithologists
and amateur birdwatchers in Central Park
. She was inspired to become a conservation activist after reading of the slaughter of 70,000 bald eagles in the Alaskan Territory, without any protest from the leading bird protection organizations of the day. She also denounced the common practice of appreciating birds by killing and mounting them for study, regardless of species' rarity.
, J. 'Ding' Darling
, Aldo Leopold
, and others. Willard Gibbs Van Name, a zoologist with the American Museum of Natural History
in New York and nephew of the mathematician Josiah Willard Gibbs
, was a key mentor who wrote Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC) pamphlets, which Edge signed and distributed nationwide. Edge became expert enough to write and advocate knowledgeably on a wide variety of conservation topics. Among them were the importance of preserving birds of prey and maintaining species diversity, the dangers of toxins and pesticides up to DDT
, and the necessity of protecting virgin forest
s.
, Edge founded and ran the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC) from 1929 until she died. The ECC's emphasis on the need to protect all species of birds and animals while they were common so that they did not become rare, was a dramatic shift from the standard thinking and practice in conservation of only preserving species that had a quantifiable economic value. As a full-time volunteer environmental activist, she also asserted that it was every person's civic duty to protect nature, working through the legislative process to achieve this. One of her first undertakings as a conservationist activist was to prod the National Association of Audubon Societies (now called the National Audubon Society
) to take much stronger measures to protect many bird species it had previously ignored.
In 1931, Edge had filed a suit against the Audubon Society to obtain its membership mailing list. A judgment in her favor gave her access to about 11,000 Audubon members who were subsequently informed about what she considered lapses in the organization's defense of birds and wildlife (Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy). A bitter feud between Edge and the Audubon Society led to the resignation of its longtime president and a significant decline in membership. The break between the National Audubon Society and Edge lasted until a few weeks before her death in November 1962.
in Pennsylvania, Edge unilaterally ended the annual shoot by buying the property and turning it into a sanctuary (Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy). Willard Gibbs Van Name, the American Museum of Natural History zoologist who advised her and secretly wrote her earliest ECC pamphlets, lent her $500 to obtain a lease-buy option on about 1,340 acres. In time, the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association grew to about 2,500 acres.
(1938) and Kings Canyon National Park
(1940), and successfully lobbied Congress to purchase about 8,000 acres of old-growth sugar pines on the perimeter of Yosemite National Park
that were to be logged. She influenced founders of The Wilderness Society
, The Nature Conservancy
, and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), along with other major wildlife protection and environmental organizations created during and just after the 30 years when she dominated the conservation movement. In 1960, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary provided the scientist and author Rachel Carson
with significant migration data that enabled her to link the decline in the juvenile raptor population to DDT, in her best-selling book, Silent Spring
.
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is a wild bird sanctuary in Albany Township and East Brunswick Township, located along the Appalachian flyway in eastern Pennsylvania. The sanctuary is a prime location for the viewing of kettling and migrating raptors with an average of 20,000 hawks, eagles and falcons...
near Kempton, Pennsylvania. During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Edge was considered the United States' most militant conservationist
Conservationist
Conservationists are proponents or advocates of conservation. They advocate for the protection of all the species in an ecosystem with a strong focus on the natural environment...
(Hawk of Mercy). In 1948, a profile of her in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
described her as "the only honest, unselfish, indomitable hellcat in the history of conservation" (New Yorker, April 17, 1948).
Early life
Mabel Rosalie Barrow was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on November 3, 1877, the youngest of five surviving children of John Wylie Barrow and Harriet Bowen Woodward Barrow. John Wylie Barrow, a wealthy British importer and accountant, was a first cousin to Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
.
In May 1909, 32-year-old Mabel Rosalie went to Yokohama
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
, Japan to marry Charles Noel Edge, a British civil engineer. After traveling in Asia for about three years in connection with Charles's employment, the Edges returned to New York permanently. Their children Peter and Margaret were born in New York (Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy).
Suffrage
In 1915, Edge joined the Equal Franchise Society, becoming a social activist for the first time in the women’s voting rights movement. Edge gave speeches and wrote pro-suffrage pamphlets, and later served as the secretary-treasurer of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party under Carrie Chapman CattCarrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt was a women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920...
(Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy).
Birdwatching
Edge began to take a strong interest in birdwatchingBirdwatching
Birdwatching or birding is the observation of birds as a recreational activity. It can be done with the naked eye, through a visual enhancement device like binoculars and telescopes, or by listening for bird sounds. Birding often involves a significant auditory component, as many bird species are...
in the 1920s, when she joined ornithologists
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
and amateur birdwatchers in Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
. She was inspired to become a conservation activist after reading of the slaughter of 70,000 bald eagles in the Alaskan Territory, without any protest from the leading bird protection organizations of the day. She also denounced the common practice of appreciating birds by killing and mounting them for study, regardless of species' rarity.
Education
While Edge was not formally trained in the natural sciences, she was educated by top forest and wildlife professionals, such as Robert Marshall, William Temple HornadayWilliam Temple Hornaday
William Temple Hornaday, Sc.D. was an American zoologist, realtor, conservationist, author, poet and songwriter...
, J. 'Ding' Darling
Jay Norwood Darling
Jay Norwood Darling , better known as Ding Darling, was a Pulitzer-Prize winning American cartoonist....
, Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold was an American author, scientist, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac , which has sold over two million copies...
, and others. Willard Gibbs Van Name, a zoologist with the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
in New York and nephew of the mathematician Josiah Willard Gibbs
Josiah Willard Gibbs
Josiah Willard Gibbs was an American theoretical physicist, chemist, and mathematician. He devised much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics as well as physical chemistry. As a mathematician, he invented vector analysis . Yale University awarded Gibbs the first American Ph.D...
, was a key mentor who wrote Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC) pamphlets, which Edge signed and distributed nationwide. Edge became expert enough to write and advocate knowledgeably on a wide variety of conservation topics. Among them were the importance of preserving birds of prey and maintaining species diversity, the dangers of toxins and pesticides up to DDT
DDT
DDT is one of the most well-known synthetic insecticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....
, and the necessity of protecting virgin forest
Virgin Forest
Virgin Forest is a self-described B-movie starring Sarsi Emmanuel, who plays a barrio lass of Chinese ancestry; the late Miguel Rodriguez, as a Filipino-Spanish illustrado; and, Abel Jurado, who plays the lover of Sarsi's character.-Synopsis:...
s.
Emergency Conservation Committee
Prior to establishing Hawk Mountain SanctuaryHawk Mountain Sanctuary
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is a wild bird sanctuary in Albany Township and East Brunswick Township, located along the Appalachian flyway in eastern Pennsylvania. The sanctuary is a prime location for the viewing of kettling and migrating raptors with an average of 20,000 hawks, eagles and falcons...
, Edge founded and ran the Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC) from 1929 until she died. The ECC's emphasis on the need to protect all species of birds and animals while they were common so that they did not become rare, was a dramatic shift from the standard thinking and practice in conservation of only preserving species that had a quantifiable economic value. As a full-time volunteer environmental activist, she also asserted that it was every person's civic duty to protect nature, working through the legislative process to achieve this. One of her first undertakings as a conservationist activist was to prod the National Association of Audubon Societies (now called the National Audubon Society
National Audubon Society
The National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation. Incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and uses science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission...
) to take much stronger measures to protect many bird species it had previously ignored.
In 1931, Edge had filed a suit against the Audubon Society to obtain its membership mailing list. A judgment in her favor gave her access to about 11,000 Audubon members who were subsequently informed about what she considered lapses in the organization's defense of birds and wildlife (Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy). A bitter feud between Edge and the Audubon Society led to the resignation of its longtime president and a significant decline in membership. The break between the National Audubon Society and Edge lasted until a few weeks before her death in November 1962.
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
In 1934, after decades of hawk and eagle slaughter on a ridge in the Appalachian MountainsAppalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
in Pennsylvania, Edge unilaterally ended the annual shoot by buying the property and turning it into a sanctuary (Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy). Willard Gibbs Van Name, the American Museum of Natural History zoologist who advised her and secretly wrote her earliest ECC pamphlets, lent her $500 to obtain a lease-buy option on about 1,340 acres. In time, the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association grew to about 2,500 acres.
Conservation Accomplishments
In addition to founding the ECC and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Edge led the national grassroots campaigns to create Olympic National ParkOlympic National Park
Olympic National Park is located in the U.S. state of Washington, in the Olympic Peninsula. The park can be divided into four basic regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west side temperate rainforest and the forests of the drier east side. U.S...
(1938) and Kings Canyon National Park
Kings Canyon National Park
Kings Canyon National Park is a National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada, east of Fresno, California. The park was established in 1940 and covers...
(1940), and successfully lobbied Congress to purchase about 8,000 acres of old-growth sugar pines on the perimeter of Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
that were to be logged. She influenced founders of The Wilderness Society
The Wilderness Society (United States)
The Wilderness Society is an American organization that is dedicated to protecting America's wilderness. It was formed in 1935 and currently has over 300,000 members and supporters.-Founding:The society was incorporated on January 21, 1935...
, The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy is a US charitable environmental organization that works to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive....
, and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), along with other major wildlife protection and environmental organizations created during and just after the 30 years when she dominated the conservation movement. In 1960, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary provided the scientist and author Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement....
with significant migration data that enabled her to link the decline in the juvenile raptor population to DDT, in her best-selling book, Silent Spring
Silent Spring
Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement....
.
External Links
- http://www.hawkmountain.org
- http://www.eowilsoncenter.org/welcome.html