Meet at the Fairchild parking area on North Porchuck Road in Greenwich.
Contact the Nature Store at (203) 869-5272 x221 for more information.
Please note: These walks will be held & every Saturday in October.
All ages.
RSVP to Nature Store at (203) 869-5272x221.
*****
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Author Dyana Furmansky
discusses
Rosalie Edge:
the woman who established the
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM
Rosalie Edge (1877-1962), the once famous but now forgotten conservation heroine who deserves credit for launching the modern environmental movement, is the subject of author
Dyana Z. Furmansky’s presentation at Audubon Greenwich on October 11th. Furmansky’s biography
Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature From The Conservationists restores the indomitable Depression-era leader of bird and wildlife protection to her controversial place in history.
Rosalie Edge vehemently and quite successfully challenged the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and other public and private conservation organizations for what she considered improper alliances with hunters, gun-makers, loggers and water developers at the expense of all endangered birds, wildlife and habitats.
Dyana Z. Furmansky's biography draws on Edge’s personal papers and on interviews with family members and associates to portray an implacable, indomitable personality whose activism earned her the names “Joan of Arc” and “hellcat.” A progressive New York socialite and veteran suffragist, Edge did not join the conservation movement until her early fifties. Nonetheless, her legacy of achievements—called “widespread and monumental” by the
New Yorker—forms a crucial link between the eras defined by
John Muir and
Rachel Carson. An early voice against the indiscriminate use of toxins and pesticides,
Edge reported evidence about the dangers of DDT fourteen years before Carson’s
Silent Spring was published.
Today,
Edge is most widely remembered for establishing
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, the world’s first refuge for birds of prey. Founded in 1934 and located in eastern Pennsylvania, Hawk Mountain was cited in
Silent Spring as an “especially significant” source of data. In 1930, Edge formed the militant Emergency Conservation Committee, which not only railed against the complacency of the Bureau of Biological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, and other stewardship organizations but also exposed the complicity of some in the squandering of our natural heritage. Edge played key roles in the establishment of Olympic and Kings Canyon National Parks and the expansion of Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Filled with new insights into a tumultuous period in American conservation, this is the life story of an unforgettable individual whose work influenced the first generation of environmentalists, including the founders of the Wilderness Society, Nature Conservancy, and Environmental Defense Fund.
Meet and learn from
Dyana Furmansky when she discusses the many insights she re-discovered about Rosalie Edge when writing the biography
Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature From The Conservationists. This new book restores the indomitable Depression-era leader of bird and wildlife protection to her controversial place in history.
Dyana Z. Furmansky (writing as Dyan Zaslowsky) is coauthor of
These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands. Her articles on nature and the environment have appeared in the
New York Times, American Heritage, Audubon, High Country News, Sierra, Wilderness, and many other publications. In 1986 she was part of the team of
High Country News reporters that won a
George Polk Award for Environmental Reporting, for the series
Western Water Made Simple. Furmansky lives in Denver.
MORE DETAILED INFO WRITTEN BY DYANA FURMANSKY
Rosalie Edge, the once famous but now forgotten conservation heroine who deserves credit for launching the modern environmental movement, is the subject of author Dyana Z. Furmansky’s presentation at Greenwich Audubon on October 11th.
Furmansky’s biography Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature From The Conservationists restores the indomitable Depression-era leader of bird and wildlife protection to her controversial place in history, much of which concerned opposition to Edge’ s mortal enemy: the National Audubon Society (then known as National Association of Audubon Societies).
In the wake of Edge’s campaign against the Audubon Society, two-thirds of its membership resigned and Gilbert Pearson, its president for 25 years, was forced to resign. The Society’s name change may also have been due in part to its acknowledgement of Edge’s reform efforts. Edge also vehemently and quite successfully challenged the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and other public and private conservation organizations for what she considered improper alliances with hunters, gun-makers, loggers and water developers at the expense of all endangered birds, wildlife and habitats.
Edge, a suffragist and New York society matron related to Charles Dickens, burst onto the conservation scene in 1929. She formed the Emergency Conservation Committee and was the founder of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. For the last 28 years of her life she ran the world’s first sanctuary for birds of prey, which celebrated its 75th anniversary this fall.
Edge’s activism can also be credited for the establishment of Olympic and Sequoia-Kings-Canyon National Parks, among many other lasting achievements. “By relentlessly publicizing what she called the ‘unpleasant facts’ of nature’s destruction, Rosalie Edge spoke against the ‘inconvenient truth’ of her era and the years leading up to it,” Furmansky says.
Yet when Edge died in 1962 at the age of 85 she instantly fell into obscurity and has remained there for ever since. Furmansky suggests that one reason Edge disappeared so quickly was the “powerful distraction” of Rachel Carson’s book
Silent Spring, an extraordinary publication event that occurred just weeks before Rosalie Edge’s death. The appearance of
Silent Spring is commonly mentioned as the beginning of the environmental movement.
Another explanation for Edge’s being totally eclipsed was the often unpleasant memory of her “aptly edgy” personality, says Furmansky. “She was a woman and an unpaid amateur in a conservation movement defined by professional scientists and government bureaucrats, and she was so certain she was right about how nature ought to be protected that she made enemies,” Furmansky explains. “But she also made admiring friends, such as Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. In looking back at what Edge represented, she was more often right and the salaried experts were wrong.”
One example of Edge’s being ahead of her time was her 30-year campaign against government-funded predator poisonings, and the widespread use of pesticides including DDT; 14 years before Silent Spring’s publication Edge reported to New York State game agents that dead orioles had been found on a Westchester Golf Course sprayed with DDT. Her report was quickly confirmed by the Interior Department. Rachel Carson’s connection to Edge is through Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, which provided the scientist with significant data on raptor population declines due to DDT.
Furmansky, who wrote for
Audubon and
The New York Times among many other publications, says she appreciated the chance to restore a lost chapter of environmental history by writing
Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy.
But it was the “treasure trove” of Edge’s personal letters, unpublished memoirs and family documents dating to the 1850s given to her by Edge’s son Peter that she found most compelling. “It was exciting to tell the intimate story of what might have driven this brilliant, bored socialite with no credentials, into a field that was alien to her,” Furmansky says. “Edge rocked conservation to its very core with the truths she revealed, and ignited the passions of a generation that included a new breed of activists—people like Roger Tory Peterson, The Sierra Club’s David Brower, Nature Conservancy Co-Founder Richard Pough, and Rachel Carson.”
RSVPs are appreciated. Space is limited. To RSVP, email:
jcordulack@audubon.orgor leave a message at (203) 869-5272 x239
No charge for this event.
A $5 suggested donation will be accepted at the door.
Meet at Audubon Greenwich
613 Riversville Road
Greenwich, CT 06831
www.greenwich.audubon.org*****
Dreams, Desires & Curiosities Exhibit
Dyana Z. Furmansky's biography draws on Edge’s personal papers and on interviews with family members and associates to portray an implacable, indomitable personality whose activism earned her the names “Joan of Arc” and “hellcat.” A progressive New York socialite and veteran suffragist, Edge did not join the conservation movement until her early fifties. Nonetheless, her legacy of achievements—called “widespread and monumental” by the New Yorker—forms a crucial link between the eras defined by John Muir and Rachel Carson. An early voice against the indiscriminate use of toxins and pesticides, Edge reported evidence about the dangers of DDT fourteen years before Carson’s Silent Spring was published.
Dyana Z. Furmansky (writing as Dyan Zaslowsky) is coauthor of These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands. Her articles on nature and the environment have appeared in the New York Times, American Heritage, Audubon, High Country News, Sierra, Wilderness, and many other publications. In 1986 she was part of the team of High Country News reporters that won a George Polk Award for Environmental Reporting, for the series Western Water Made Simple. Furmansky lives in Denver.
Looking for an inexpensive local event in Fairfield County, CT (USA) - check out the blogs Stamford on the Cheap and Greenwich on the Cheap.
Greenwich Library
Bartlett Arboretum Gardens
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