Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler—Albert Einstein
The third principle of the Culture of Conservation is to keep the message simple. Effective marketing is little more than simple messages and images repeated endlessly. Remember the earlier quote that 93% of American children can recognize McDonalds by the golden arches? I wonder what the percentage is now for the Japanese?
McDonalds sponsoring the Osaka sumo basho
Simple messages and images rise above the cacophony that is modern life. Simplicity and volume (both amplitude and amount) help messages battle through the noise. Doubt this? According to the Associated Press, BP’s been spending more than $5 million a week on advertising since the blowout. Remember BPs original simple message? Beyond Petroleum.
Freeman Tilden inspired what we now know as the interpretation profession. Tilden stressed the need for interpreters (guides, museum staff, National Park Service employees and the like) to know their audiences. My impression is that most conservation groups consider their members to be the audience. No wonder the messages are so obtuse, and geared toward fund raising.
Freeman TildenOur professional organization for interpretation is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI). I am a NAI supporter, and I am working to have myself certified by them in every way possible (Freeman didn’t write about interpretation until the age of 62). But in recent years Jon Kohl, Sam Ham, and I have been thinking about conservation interpretation, and the need to train staff that can communicate and interpret conservation, not just nature, history, or culture. We have completed organizing the training program, and once I finish with my current NAI certification projects I want to turn my attention to this component of our work.
Why? Because I believe that conservation as a movement is fundamentally inept when it comes to devising ways in which people can relate to our work (another of Tilden’s principals).
Rather than continue to offer Tilden’s principles in a piecemeal fashion, here are the six principles from Interpreting Our Heritage:
1. Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.
2. Information, as such, is not interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However, all interpretation include information.
3. Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical, or architectural. Any art is to some degree teachable.
4. The chief aim of interpretation is not instruction but provocation.
5. Interpretation should aid to present a whole rather than a part and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.
6. Interpretation addressed to children should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.
NAI offers a number of certification programs, and I endorse them all. Interestingly, most conservation groups do not have certified interpretive staff, a mistake in my opinion. But I also believe that there is a need for us in the profession to develop a certification program in conservation interpretation, a program that does not exist currently. For those interested in where we have taken this idea, there is information here on the Fermata blog.
The key to successful simplification, however, is (as Einstein said) to keep things simple but not too simple. In conservation we deal with complex issues like global warming, oil spills, biodiversity, and extinction. These topics do not lend themselves to simplicity. Yet, as Tilden stated, our presentations, programs, and messages must address the desires, experiences, and limitations of our audiences. In this way I agree with Tilden that interpretation is an art, one practiced well by a few. Read Enos Mills, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, and Peter Matthiessen to get a sense of the interpretive art as it relates to conservation.
Enos MillsThis helps us understand the recent debate here about the Ted Williams’ article in Audubon, and Drew Wheelan’s reports for the American Birding Assocation. Williams is a journalist, a master craftsman. His work can be judged by its lucidness and accuracy. Unfortunately, as journalism Williams’ article failed miserably. Drew did not pretend to be a journalist; instead, he functioned as an observer. Drew placed himself in situations in the Gulf that allowed us to experience the blowout and its impacts through his eyes. Yes, Drew is passionate about his work, an attribute that contributes to effective interpretation. Williams debated facts and completely missed the story. Drew didn’t sweat every fact and captured the story in all of its horror, devastation, and pathos.
The National Park Service (NPS) has devised an equation to show the key components that go into the interpretive experience – (Kr + Ka) X AT = IO. Remember, however, that this is metaphor, not math. The equation states that a knowledge of the resource (Kr) plus a knowledge of the audience (Ka), multiplied by well-grounded interpretive techniques (AT), will create an interpretive opportunity (IO). The equation is often displayed as a teeter-totter, where an overemphasis on one factor, such as knowledge of the resource, can outweigh and overwhelm the audience and any interpretive technique. In my experience this is the chief failing of conservation groups. Yes, they can all impress with a knowledge of the resources, but most have no concept of how to communicate that knowledge or a conservation imperative to the audience.
Let’s recap. I have now presented three of the Culture of Conservation principles:
1. Take it to the street
2. Make space for place
3. Keep it simple, not simplistic
Keep tuned for the next principle – Aim straight for the heart.
Everything in its place. In Franklin’s case, the place is Philadelphia. For the past year I have been helping Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the nation’s first. More than 300 years ago, William Penn designed Philadelphia to be a “Greene Country Towne,” where squares, parks, and open spaces would allow residents to escape the pace and unhealthy conditions found in 17th-century European cities. In 1690 Governor Penn required for every five acres cleared one acre of forest should be preserved. Franklin led a commission to regulate waste water in the city (leading to the first waste water treatment in the country). Where I am working, Fairmount Park encompasses 9,200 acres, a full 10 percent of the land in Philadelphia (city and county).
Recently I have been rereading Jane Jacobs, and mulling over how our concepts about cities might also apply to conserved lands. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities she commented on how many of the City Beautiful centers failed, attracting not successful small business and shops but “tattoo parlors and second-hand-clothing stores, or else just nondescript, dispirited decay.” Jane died too soon. Perhaps it took cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh longer than she expected to revise their approaches to their once-celebrated centers. Philadelphia’s city center now ranks among the tops in the nation in downtown residents. Pittsburgh has been ranked by Forbes as America’s most livable city.
My work is with parks and open spaces, not with buildings and the urban core. Yet in recent years I have been increasingly interested in how these once flourishing cities, places where city leaders once invested in parks, museums, and grand esplanades, are now using these same inherited assets to reinvent themselves. These cultural, historical, and natural amenities anchor cities, and offer a stable platform for reconstructing and reinvigorating the society that surrounds them. Yet there is an undeniable rule of law that governs these places. To have treasured places, you must protect treasured spaces.
How do the two differ? Place, for my purposes, is a physical location with defined metes and bounds. For example, the national park lands that include the Grand Canyon can be shown on a map with clear, defined boundaries. Most conservation organizations and land conservancies are focused on place.
Grand Canyon - The Place
Space, however, is psychological rather than physical. The federal lands that comprise Grand Canyon National Park do not limit the psychological space occupied by the Grand Canyon. That space includes Flagstaff, Sedona, the Havasupai Indian Reservation, the bordering national forest land, the smell of pinyon burning, the sounds of elk bugling, the crashing of the Colorado River as it slices through the canyon, and the colors of a sunset painted on the canyon walls. The Grand Canyon space is filled individually, with each person defining “Grand Canyon” based on their personal experiences and exposure. Space is the sum of all that is known and felt about a given place or group of places. Space is identity rather than body. While place has discrete, physical boundaries, space has soft, amorphous edges. Space is of the mind; place is of the land.
Grand Canyon Space Example
This chart shows a rudimentary space model for the Grand Canyon. The number of places I am showing is arbitrary; certainly, Grand Canyon is a far more complex landscape than this. More importantly, this model should be three dimensional (at least more than this Powerpoint chart illustrates). If you have visited the Grand Canyon, what do you recall about your visit? What spaces do these sensations occupy in your mind? Mine would include the smell of pinyon in a Flagstaff restaurant, an American three-toed woodpecker feeding in a burned area in the national forest, and the thrill of standing with my grandchildren at the South Rim mesmerized by the sunset.
Grand Canyon Sunset
Here are a couple of additional examples to mull over. The White House is a small place, occupying an extraordinarily large space in the American mind. The Alamo in San Antonio is similar. Many visitors to the Alamo are surprised that the mission is so small. Fairmount Park is an expansive, diverse place, but a small space. Few people know the actual extent of the Fairmount Park system, and relate only to their favorite place within it.
Conservation agencies and organizations are understandably focused on place. A place can be purchased, fenced, posted, and protected. However, how people relate to these efforts (and their willingness to support their protection) is defined by their personal perception of the space. Whether or not they value a place is determined by how they perceive the space.
Therefore my second step in reshaping our conservation movement (remember the first? Take it to the streets!) is that we need to create more spaces for places. The world is full of place conservers. We need more space makers.
McDonalds is a fast-food joint that sells hamburgers. There are around 14,000 McDonalds in the US, and each occupies a discrete place or location. But what about the space that McDonalds occupies in the American psyche? Consider that 93% of American children can identify a McDonalds by its golden arches. How many can identify a national park by the arrowhead logo? Which has a larger American space – McDonalds or the National Park Service?
Fortunately, the technology exists for us to create space for place. We do not need McDonalds advertising budget to construct an American space for American places. Consider all of the places that should be brought to the attention of the public, and the spaces they combine to form. I am interested in the smallest neighborhood park to Yellowstone National Park. How many are in your community? What spaces do they occupy in your and your neighbor’s lives?
The U.S. is in the midst of the worst economic recession in my lifetime. When state and federal budgets are slashed, who gets cut first? Places, such as parks, refuges, and sanctuaries are the first to go. Is this because they are not valuable places? Of course not. Political leaders hatchet our treasured places because they occupy limited space in the interests and concerns of the voting public. In other words, our places are easy marks, and we who strive to protect them are defenseless chumps.
I am not willing to go through another budget or political cycle so defenseless. We must develop the tools to collect our places into aggregations that occupy critical social space in the lives of our citizens. It is not enough to limit our efforts to simply protecting places. We have no choice but to squeeze ourselves into the American space.
I do have ideas about how to accomplish this, and I will write more in the near future. We need the tools to stitch these places into seamless spaces, and the media necessary to present these spaces to America.
In the meantime, let me remind you of my first two steps of a renewed conservation movement:
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture—Gaylord Nelson
Gifford Pinchot popularized, rather than coined, the word conservation. He placed his mark on the word by combining conservation with ethic, embedding his concept of conservation in an almost forgotten book The Fight for Conservation. Aldo Leopold followed with the Land Ethic which states that conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. For the past century American conservation has heeded these tenets.
Yet even Leopold spoke of the difficulties in applying these rules, these ethics. In Land Ethic Leopold asks the following:
Despite nearly a century of propaganda, conservation still proceeds at a snail’s pace; progress still consists largely letterhead pieties and conventional oratory. On the back forty we still slip two steps backward for each forward stride. The usual answer to this dilemma is ‘more conservation education.’ No one will debate this, but is it certain that on the volume of education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in the content as well?
Walter Russell Mead has recently written that the environmental movement has “become the voice of the establishment, of the tenured, of the technocrats.” Leopold spoke of “letterhead pieties and conventional oratory.” Edward Abbey said “that which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.” What all are saying (or at least implying) is that conservation, to remain relevant, must constantly evolve. Yet as conservation has become more business and less movement, the forces constraining evolution have become increasingly restrictive and dampening. At these junctures evolution must become revolution.
Over a decade ago I served on the board of the National Audubon Society. One spring we met in Jamestown, North Dakota, where we continued with our debates and discussions about a new strategic plan for the Society. I recall sitting in the Holiday Inn, unable to sleep, and slipping over to my computer to write a section of the plan that I called the culture of conservation. Although the board at that time adopted my thoughts, not long after I left the board the concept vacated as well.
Now I want my idea back.
As I have written before, the conservation and environmental movements (which I will simplify to movement) have been signaled onto the wrong track. I will avoid the Casey Jones analogy, but my message is the same. I see trouble ahead, and trouble behind. Once an organic, social phenomenon, the movement has sacrificed its soul in the pursuit of efficiency and currency. Most environmental organizations are well-meaning, highly educated, and effectively isolated from the fabric of everyday life in America.
Here are a few off-the-cuff examples. In the U.S. two out of three Americans are white, non-Hispanic (according to the census bureau). About 16% of Americans are Hispanic, and around 13% are black. I know of no environmental organization, agency, or department where employment or membership remotely reflects these percentages. The environmental movement, save environmental justice, remains lily white.
In the U.S., only 27 percent of the population has earned a college degree. Only 8.9 percent of Americans have a Masters’ Degree and only 3 percent have earned a PhD. Yet the conservation and resource agencies and organizations usually require an advanced degree as a term of employment. We are white and egg-heads.
Environmental threats occur in every state. In recent years, for example, the Gulf of Mexico (Katrina, Ike, the BP gusher, the dead zone) has been a hot spot. Rural communities are often disproportionately at risk, for example the Marcellus Shale play in Pennsylvania and New York states. Yet the national environmental groups office in the largest cities in the U.S., and at the edges of the country. Here are a few examples:
National Audubon Society – New York City
Defenders of Wildlife – Washington D.C.
National Wildlife Federation – Washington D.C.
American Bird Conservancy – Washington D.C.
Environmental Defense Fund – New York City
The Conservation Fund – Washington D.C.
Defenders of Wildlife – Washington D.C.
The Trust for Public Land – San Francisco
The Sierra Club – San Francisco
I remember an Audubon board meeting that I helped arrange in McAllen, Texas. The board and dozens of staff members would be coming to southmost Texas for this meeting. I recall one of the young female staff members cornering me before the meeting, asking me if it would be safe to drink the water.
I mention this not to embarrass the Audubon staff. I only want to illustrate my point about the groups being culturally, educationally, and geographically remote.
The environmental problems and threats we face in this country are relevant to everyman, not just white, educated urbanites. The average American earns less than $40,000 annually, does not have a college education, and is left wondering why he or she should give a damn about something as amorphous and ill-defined as global warming. We in the environmental movement may be convinced of the facts, and smugly certain of our position, but science does not win elections or hearts. The average American must understand enough to care, and care enough to vote. At this moment, he and she do neither.
You say you want a revolution? Begin and end with the people.
Lincoln said:
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
By real facts Lincoln did not mean the obscure, confusing, and tiresome arguments that only serve to alienate our audience. For example, I believe that most people understand that millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico is not a good thing. What most do not understand are the endless arguments between experts. We speculate about lost oil while Governor Barbour howls about lost jobs. We debate the pros and cons of cleaning birds while Governor Jindal promises to clean house. We aim for the head, they for the heart.
I realize that the terms grassroots and ground up are hackneyed and shopworn. This does not mean that the words are not true, even if overused. Few of the national environmental organizations are of the grassroots form. Sierra has a local chapter structure, and a few have state offices. Audubon had the most distributed, community-level organization of them all, with hundreds of local chapters. Yet over the past several years Audubon has moved away from chapters and more toward state offices and centers. The Tea Party has shown the efficacy of working at the community, even district, level. Our movement, in contrast, has spent the last decade consolidating and distancing itself from the hoi polloi.
Here is an example. A close friend in Houston wrote me to ask about volunteer opportunities to help with the Gulf gusher. Her daughter had a few free weeks of summer break to spend, and she desperately wanted to help. She called Audubon and asked about opportunities, and received the fundraising spiel in return. Ted Williams recently wrote in Audubon magazine that “the very last thing Gulf Coast birds need are well-meaning amateurs crashing through nesting habitat.” Dead wrong, Ted. What the movement needs is those 17,000 potential volunteers to become crusaders, and what better way to engage them than through their willingness to pitch in and help. We would all agree that nesting areas would be off limits to the uninitiated. But that leaves the vast majority of the shore eligible for cleaning by volunteers.
Our movement has become Conservation Inc. We need to step forward to the past, and spark conservation back to life.
Walter Russell Mead notes the following:
Intellectually and culturally, environmentalists came out of the same movement as critics of crude urban development like Jane Jacob (The Death and Life of Great American Cities). They celebrated the diverse local, small-scale adaptations that reflected the knowledge of communities as opposed to the grandiose plans of the social engineers.
Precisely. Jane Jacobs dug in against Robert Moses and the planners who would have stripped New York of the diversity that is its hallmark. She worked at the neighborhood level, yet argued that her concepts also had application on a global scale. Jacobs spent her life concerned with city culture, and the ways in which enlightened, empowered citizens can persevere. I will argue that conservation is a community as well, peopled by well meaning, dedicated citizens that simply need to be empowered, enlightened, and appreciated.
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has—Margaret Mead
Yes, a small group of people can provoke a cultural shift. Change is contingent on these provocateurs, the tiny legion willing to face friend and foe alike. My previous article focused on one of these provocateurs, Drew Wheelan. Drew is a person willing to allow the public to see a problem (the Gulf gusher) through his eyes. We need more of his kind to help us drag this movement out of the muck. I am not arguing that the ecocrats and Conservation Inc. should go away. We need all the help we can get. I am arguing, though, that we need to quickly reintroduce ourselves to our neighbors and ask for their help, not just their money. In this we are years behind, so we have little time to waste.
This is just the first part of a rewriting of conservation and the movement that needs to take place. Future articles will address additional steps in the process. But without the public, there is no movement. Let’s take it to the street.
It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air –
and there, night came in.
When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography –
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.
Pablo Neruda
The American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU) has reshuffled the birding world, and bird people are checking their lists to find the winners and losers, the splits and the lumps. The splitters have dominated for the past several years, and I see no overcoming their hegemony. Why complain? I gain a whip-poor-will and a wren without lifting the binocs.
Birders obsess over the typology of birds. I obsess over the typology of birders. For years I have tried to understand the diverse ways people approach nature through birds. I know; the word “birdwatcher” conjures visions of mossy pith helmets, khaki shorts framing pallid legs, and Miss Jane Hathaway. But there are over 80 million bird people, and surely not all are as geeky as the spoofs would imply. For God’s sake, Ian Fleming named his fictional spy (Bond, James Bond) after one of the bird people!
Who are these bird people? Let’s return to the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment (NSRE), the survey that cuts the broadest swath across the birding world. The NSRE asks the following questions in their telephone surveys of Americans 16 and older:
During the past 12 months, did you view, identify, or photograph birds outdoors?
Respondents that answered yes are then asked the following question:
On how many different days did you view, identify, or photograph birds outdoors?
A sample that the NSRE believes accurately reflects 81 million Americans answered yes to the first question. What astounds me is that anyone would answer no. What sentient human on this planet has not viewed a bird in the past 12 months, the visually impaired notwithstanding? How many people in this country have not seen or heard a bird today? I know, there are shut-ins for whom nature is shut out. But for the rest of us, just open the front door or the shades.
Let’s begin with the assumption that the NSRE respondents believed “view” to mean a concerted effort rather than incidental contact. If so, there are over 80 million Americans who have consciously approached nature through birds – the bird people. Within this amorphous mass there is a small segment we label as birdwatchers or birders. The vast majority are titleless. Most enjoy birds around the home, and may get no more advanced in skill than recognizing a chee-chee bird at the feeder.
Is this world of bird people so unfaceted, so simple as to be inhabited by a homogeneous people who only “view, identify, and photograph?” Enter typology. We know thousands of species of birds. What about the species of birders?
To develop a typology of bird people we must first strip away the obvious and look closely at how motivations are manifest in behavior. In other words, what are all of the ways that an interest in birds is reflected in how bird people act? What brings people to birds in the first place, and what keeps them engaged? Why do a few identify with the name “birder,” while most don’t?
I will start with the watchers. There are bird people who watch all birds, and collect their experiences in the form of a list. In the U.S., to list 700 species is considered a milestone accomplishment. There are watchers that have life lists, state lists, county lists, city lists, yard lists, and even feeder lists. Some bird people count the birds seen each year, and others try to see the most in a single day. Some count hawks, some shorebirds. Many watch at night, others from the deck of a boat (pelagics, whooping cranes, puffins). I have known people who kept a list of birds seen or heard while watching television and movies (surely you remember the kookaburras and peacocks echoing through Tarzan’s jungle).
Bird people join organizations and clubs, such as the National Audubon Society, the American Birding Association, state ornithological societies, and local bird clubs. Many join just to receive a magazine or newsletter. Each activity, event, organization, and periodical attracts an infinitesimally small fraction of the bird people. The bird people are the elephant in the bathtub, yet most serving them see only a leg, foot, or trunk.
There are bird people that watch but do not keep lists (I am one of the listless). Some try to place a name on every bird seen, while many are content to experience nature through birds without a need for further analysis or understanding. There are those who will spend thousands of dollars on equipment, and some are happy with a $25 pair of Tascos. I know accomplished bird people who carry nothing more than a dog-eared field guide and a pair of Army surplus binoculars, and incompetent birders who are well-adorned gear-heads. There are traditional bird people who rely on optics, and others who watch birds migrate with Doppler radar and track them by satellite. Many watch birds on their computers (feedercams, nestcams). Bird people watch owls and goat-suckers at night (and migrants crossing the full moon), and others record bird sounds with ARUs (Autonomous Recording Unit).
There are watchers who memorialize what they see in ways other than ticking a name off of a list. For example, there are bird people who photograph birds, digiscope birds, draw birds, paint birds, record bird songs, video birds, and keep notes and journals about bird sightings. Bird people then submit their notes and recordings of rarities to other bird people who serve on bird committees. Bird people maintain rare bird alerts, phone messages, and email lists such as Birdchat. There are a select few who devise new ways of identifying birds (ID Frontiers). There are bird people producing bird programs on radio, television, and video. There are even bird people movies such as Winged Migration, March of the Penguins, and the forthcoming Big Year.
There are bird people who express their watching experiences through art. Pablo Neruda wrote poems about watching birds. Salvidor Dali included a barn swallow in Still Life – Fast Moving, and crows were among Van Gogh’s final subjects in Wheat Field with Crows. Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker is perhaps his best writing, and of course Peter Matthiessen has written about birds and nature often during his splendid career. I find it heartening to know that Neruda, Dali, Van Gogh, Robbins, and Matthiessen are bird people too.
But bird people memorialized birds in art millennia before the impressionists. I have seen peacocks painted on the walls of Tao shrines in China, ocellated turkeys in Mayan glyphs, and a kingfisher exquisitely illustrated in a Hiroshige woodblock print. The Egyptians including cranes and falcons in their monuments, Native Americans carved owl faces in their rock art, and Australian aboriginals painted the extinct Genyornis on cave walls over 40,000 years ago.
Peacock painting, Weibao Mountain, Yunnan, China
Writers and artists describe and illustrate birds also as a way of educating and informing. Bird people write and illustrate identification guides (such as those by David Sibley, Kenn Kaufman, and National Geographic), organize bird trails, and create weblogs about birds and birding (such as Birdspert, and 10000 Birds). Yet within each of these subsets there are further divisions. We have yet to reach the atomic level of watching. For example, there are people who photograph from a blind, others who shoot from the window of their car, and some use high-speed flash. There are those who like to photograph birds on the wing, those who prefer the closest cropped view, and others, such as the Japanese, who photograph birds within a broader landscape.
There are bird painters who use water colors, and others who paint in oils. There are sketchers, illustrators, and print-makers and lithographers. There are painters who strive for realism, others for impression. People carve birds, mold birds, and cast birds. A few people paint only hummingbirds, others only ducks. In my Galveston home there are prints by Audubon, Gould, Fuertes, Peterson, John O’Neil, GM Sutton, Don Eckelberry, and Lars Jonnson. I am surrounded by bird people.
What about the bird-feeding bird people? Aren’t they watchers too (I doubt that many are feeding birds to fatten them up.)? There are gardeners for whom birds are a byproduct of the urban landscape. Many people are content to hang a couple of seed feeders from an eave, others manage intricate bird cafeterias with nectar, water, suet cakes, fruit, meal worms, wax worms, and various seeds and nuts on the menu. In the north people feed hummingbirds in the summer, and along the Gulf coast in the winter. Rather than install feeders, there are bird people who would rather cultivate native habitat around the yard, ranch, or farm to attract birds. Some install bird baths, others elaborate ponds. Some build bird houses, some buy and install the same (for bluebirds, for example), some people and even communities erect elaborate hotels for purple martins, and others construct artificial chimneys for swifts. Many of these feeder/garden/bird house people are organized. There is the Purple Martin Conservation Association, the Hummingbird Society, and ChimneySwifts.org. Some participate in Cornell’s Feeder Watch. Others subscribe to specialty magazines (Birds and Blooms and Bird Watchers’ Digest, for example).
Of course there are other bird people who supply the bird feeder people. There are bird people that manufacture (Droll Yankee feeders, Perky Pet), retailers (Duncraft, Wild Birds Unlimited), and websites (The Backyard Bird Company, JustBirdHouses, and BirdWatcher Supply Company). At backyardbird.com, you can order a bird house with your favorite NFL team’s insignia emblazoned on the front. Big Pockets provides clothing for birders, and Nikon, Swarovski, and Bushnell are among the optic manufacturers. Google the words “birdwatching supply” and see the reach of the market. Non-profit nature centers sell birding stuff, CLO sells birding stuff, Walmart sells birding stuff, National Geographic sells birding stuff, and ABA sells birding stuff.
There are bird people who offer services to other bird people. There are bird lodges (Pico Bonito in Honduras, Asa Wright in Trinidad, and O’Reilly’s in Australia are among my favorites), and bird guide companies that will take you to them (Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, Wings, and Field Guides, for example). There are bird tourism agencies and staff, marketing bird experiences such as the Wetlands and Wildlife Scenic Byway in Kansas or the World Birding Centers in South Texas. There are companies, such as Fermata, that help bird companies connect with other bird people.
Bird companies are bird people too.
Then there are the people who hunt birds. Of course all intentionally view birds as well, even if only down the barrel of a shotgun. There are bird hunters who stalk upland birds such as pheasant and quail, and others who find pleasure in freezing in a duck blind. There are bird people who hunt cranes, rails, snipe, and woodcock. Some hunters are after dove in the fall, others turkey in the spring. Some use dogs, others master bird calls. Bird hunters have not only separate interests but separate organizations as well, such as Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, Quail Unlimited, the Ruffed Grouse Society, and the National Wild Turkey Federation. If a hunter responds affirmatively to the NSRE survey, he (hunters are predominantly male) becomes one of the bird people as well.
These types of hunting are legal and controlled. Other types are not. There are kids killing yard birds with pellet guns. In many countries (such as Mexico), there are bird people who make their living by trapping and selling caged birds. Many of the trappers know precisely the names and habits of the birds they capture. Are these bird people too? Aren’t they intentionally viewing?
Bird people express, watch, feed, and hunt. They also study and teach. There are scientists for whom birds are the primary subject (ornithologists), and others for whom birds are indicators (ecologists, for example). There are universities such as LSU and Cornell with renowned schools of ornithology. There are bird educators, both formal and informal. Bird people lead field trips, conduct seminars, and speak at gatherings of other bird people. There are bird education organizations such as the Bird Education Network, Flying WILD, and Cornell’s Project Urban Bird. Bird people band birds during migration, at night (like owls at Whitefish Point), some for research, and others to ring and fling. A few collect birds as specimens, others collect birds as points of data.
Banding northern saw-whet owls at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory
There are bird scientists who study bird conservation, and others who manage conservation in the field. There are game and nongame bird biologists. There are professional bird students, and nonprofessional bird teachers. I know bird people who inventory proposed sites for wind power development, and others who study endangered species threatened by oil spills. In recent years many bird people have become involved with identifying important bird areas (IBAs), and compiling breeding bird atlases. There are bird laboratories and bird observatories, with some specializing in research (Point Reyes and Powermill), some in education (Black Swamp, Cape May), and others in conservation (Gulf Coast Bird Observatory).
Bird people are also in the public’s eye. Two former presidents were (and are) bird people – Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter. As a young man Roosevelt even toyed with becoming a biologist, and he kept a detailed list of all the birds he saw on the White House grounds during his presidency. The brief movie below is from the 1915 trip to Breton Island (LA) by Roosevelt, the only one of his refuges he personally visited. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are bird people as well. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers tripped alleged spy Alger Hiss with a prothonotary warbler. Count Jane Alexander, George Plimpton, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming among the bird people too.
Bird people are also in the public’s eye. Two former presidents were (and are) bird people: Theodore Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter. As a young man Roosevelt even toyed with becoming a biologist, and he kept a detailed list of all the birds he saw on the White House grounds during his presidency. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are bird people as well. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers tripped alleged spy Alger Hiss with a prothonotary warbler. Count Jane Alexander, George Plimpton, Agatha Christie, and Ian Fleming among the bird people too.
I have even known bird people named for birds (names either by their parents or later changed; I’m not asking.). I know a cerulean (Susan, one of the creators of the Great Florida Birding Trails), a shearwater (Deborah, whose company guides people to see pelagic species such as shearwaters), and a mallard (Larry, who managed wildlife refuges in Arkansas when I knew him). The former president of the National Audubon Society is John Flicker, and the current chairman of the board is Holt Thrasher.
Bird conservation groups work at the state level (Mass Audubon, New Jersey Audubon), and some locally (such as the Houston Audubon Society and Hawk Mountain). Federal and state agencies promote bird conservation, manage bird refuges and sanctuaries, and enforce bird conservation laws and treaties. Cities such as Houston, Chicago, and Philadelphia have signed the Urban Conservation Treaty for Migratory Birds. I have known staff from bird organizations that eagerly raised funds for birds they knew nothing about. I have known crusaders that would slip in the name of an endangered bird at the drop of a hat if it bolstered their argument. And I have known many, many bird people who blithely ignored the bush with the bird.
Who are the bird people? All of this, and more.
Birdwatching is a Victorian pastime that overnight morphed into a 21st Century recreation – birding. Birding has the flexibility to allow each person to fit the interest to themselves. The constraints that once limited birding (where to go, what to see) have been shattered by technology. Along with the transformation of watching, other aspects have been fundamentally altered. When I began birding scientists were still arguing whether or not birds migrated across the Gulf of Mexico. Now we can watch them on Doppler from the comforts of our living room. As as kid we bought striped sunflower seed (the only type available) at the feed store. Now I go to Wildbirds Unlimited and have access to every type of seed, feeder, and accoutrement I can imagine. Birds and their watching have become a big business, fueled by the growing appetite of the bird people.
Birds bind people together. No human being aware of their surroundings has lived absent birds. Birds offer a lingua franca for describing nature, and a portal for approaching the world outdoors. No matter how divergent our evolution, we all converge upon a notion expressed so sublimely by bird person (and Nobel Laureate) Pablo Neruda:
Pablo Neruda
A people’s poet,
provincial and birder,
I’ve wandered the world in search of life,
bird by bird I’ve come to know the earth.
A bird person may live next door, date your daughter, or drink a beer with you after work. You won’t know. Bird people are anonymous and invisible, remaining transparent unless outed by their binoculars, bird feeders, or the I Brake for Birds! sticker on the Isuzu in the driveway. Bird people are everywhere yet nowhere. Bird people are everyone yet no one.
I am a bird person.
To know more about bird people, let’s begin with a definition of who they are or aren’t. Simply put, bird people find their way to nature through wild birds. We feed birds, garden for birds, photograph birds, and watch birds. We collect bird books, photographs, and sounds, and some of us collect the names of the birds we have seen on a list.
Except for the shared interest in birds, little else is common among bird people. Although we number in the tens of millions, we are not a cohesive, delineated group. While other recreations have sharp edges and defined borders (you become a hunter the day your dad buys you a gun and a license), there is no single act that welcomes you to our bird fraternity. Our recreation is amorphous, porous, and pliable. Each bird person negotiates an individual relationship with both the resource and the recreation.
Bird people congregating at Scouts' Woods during a fallout
We count hunters and anglers by licenses sold. How do we count bird people? Poorly, I am afraid. The most commonly quoted survey is from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) titled Birding in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis. According to the agency, in 2006 there were 48 million people in the U.S. age 16 or older who watched, fed, and/or photographed birds. Relatively equal numbers of men (46%) and women (54%) participated. Almost 42 million watched, fed, and photographed birds around the home, with around 20 million traveling away from home to enjoy birds (an increase of 8% over the 2001 survey).
The USFWS uses a conservative approach by limiting the survey. The agency is interested only in those who either closely observe birds around the home, or who take trips more than one mile from home for the primary purpose of watching, feeding, or photographing birds. Incidentally seeing a hummingbird while mowing the yard is not considered “watching.” Even so, this definition of bird people encompasses 21% of the American population, or 1 out of every 5 Americans. For comparison, the PGA estimates that there are 27 million golfers in the U.S., marginally over half of those who find their way to nature through birds rather than birdies.
The USFWS is not the only organization counting bird people. The most conservative (i.e., lowest) estimates are from the Outdoor Industry Association and their Outdoor Recreation Participation Report. According to the OIA and its Outdoor Foundation, 14.4 million American watched birds more than 1/4 mile away from home or a vehicle in 2008. In the same year over 24 million Americans watched wildlife away from home and car.
The USFWS counts both home and away from home watching, so the discrepancy in estimates is obvious. Yet I am comfortable with the USFWS 20 million watching birds away from home compared to the OIA 14.4 million. When counting bird people, close is as good as it gets.
Crane viewers, Platte River, Nebraska
Finally we have the National Survey of Recreation and the Environment (NSRE) to consider. I have worked with this survey for years, and I am comfortable with what it can and cannot provide. The NSRE offers the broadest view of recreation, and therefore I believe that their estimates are most accurate in delineating the softest edges of a given recreation. According to the NSRE, there are over 81 million American who watch birds, no matter how casually. Rather than considering this an estimate of a defined population, I would prefer treating this more as a potential. I do not believe that the vast majority of these 81 million Americans consider themselves to be birders or birdwatchers, but nevertheless they are finding their way to nature (no matter how circuitous the route) through birds.
Let’s summarize. There are over 80 million bird people in the U.S., according to the NSRE. Around 40 million closely watch, feed, and photograph birds around their homes, and between 15 and 20 million travel away from home to see birds. In addition, the three surveys show this to be a growing population. The bird people are on the move.
Why does this matter? For many of us, it doesn’t. But for those who are interested in organizing, marketing to, or understanding bird people, the numbers matter. Here is an example (carried forward from my most recent article on the American Birding Association). Currently the ABA has around 14 thousand members. Using the most conservative estimate (the OIA), this membership represents around a tenth of a percent of the traveling bird people in the nation. That’s right; one tenth of one percent! With 350 thousand members, the National Audubon Society does no better than 2.5% and these members are hardly all attracted to Audubon by birds. In both cases, memberships have been declining. How is it that bird people are growing while bird groups are shrinking?
Bird people are not just birders or birdwatchers. Bird people are diverse, and their interests diverge after the initial attraction to birds. ABA and Audubon have lost sight of the bird people, and have remained content to carve out what each has believed to be a competitive niche. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO) took a different tack with eBird, and the results have been (in my opinion) spectacular. Evolution has both winners and losers.
In the case of the ABA, their niche (the most avid of the birders) has evolved at a more pronounced rate than the group itself. The ABA is an eight-track tape, and the niche is buying iPods. Though ABA has toyed with new technologies (PEEPS and Ted Floyd’s use of Twitter), the organization’s leadership still views the recreation through tired, old eyes. Compounding the problem is that ABA is offering potential members less than in the past, and the little that is being provided is dated. Why should anyone be surprised that members are slipping away?
Economics 101 – if your market is growing, and your share is shrinking, you change. The alternatives are to close shop, or to be content with diminishing market share. I have no idea what will happen with ABA (or Audubon, for that matter), but both have fairly simple choices to make. The numbers are real, and the bird people are on the march.
