Expressing my Disappointment in Audubon National
About a year ago I wrote about how I’d given up on the National Audubon Society and would no longer donate to them. The organization is named after John J. Audubon, who was both a ground breaking ornithologist and a really terrible person — including being a white supremacist who kept and sold slaves. The Audubon National organization has a number of problems, with internal diversity and work environment problems bad enough that the employees unionized and the current head of the group was forced out. I was tired of giving funds to what seemed like an organization that was somewhat broken and unwilling or unable to grapple with the key problems it was facing.
So here we are in Spring 2023, and the National Audubon, having spent about two years pondering the issue of its name, has made a decision — to not change it.
My initial reaction was a flash of anger, but mostly frustration and disappointment — and I admit I wasn’t at all surprised.
Since then, I’ve spent some time reading up on this and pondering my reaction. Elizabeth Gray, the new CEO who was brought in to fix the problems that caused the old CEO to be removed, wrote a very good and thoughtful open letter on the challenges. I have felt she was a good choice to take on the organization and overall, she’s impressed me as trying to fix the organization and being a good leader of it.
The problems with the organization persist — Greenwire has a good overview of them — for instance, the organization has hired two executives to come in and lead the diversity office, and both have left within a few months. Clearly, the wish to fix key internal problems like this is easy to talk about, harder to implement.
Their ongoing lack of support of local chapters continues to annoy me, but to some degree I’ll cut them some slack, since they clearly have bigger issues to grapple with, but I still want to see them embrace the local chapters rather than try to pretend they don’t exist (to make it clear, your local Audubon chapter gets almost zero funding from the National Organization, and little to no support in any other way. In fact, when I was involved with Santa Clara Valley Audubon, we had a situation happen where the National put together an event local to us, and didn’t bother to tell us about it, much less ask us to work with them on it. We found out via the press release. Yeah.)
In the mean time, other Audubon Groups have been grappling with this issue — we were doing that at SCVAS before I moved north. Seattle, Chicago, Washington D.C. and others have announced plans to change their names. The Audubon union has dropped the name and is now known as the Bird Union.
Difficult, Nuanced and Complicated
As of right now, my local chapter, Kitsap Audubon, has said they have not decided to change their name (which I’ll note, is not the same as having decided not to change it). Neither has SCVAS, even though I know there was strong sentiment within it that it was the right thing to do, but in reality, doing this is difficult, complicated and nuanced.
I was hoping that the National Audubon organization would take the courageous step in doing so, as that would set a precedent that would make it easier for the local chapters to follow. If you read Gray’s open letter, I feel they honestly grappled with the challenges of this decision before making the choice they did. I honestly feel they made what they believe is the best choice for the company. The open letter sets out their plans, including a good bit of funding, to try to deal with the reality of being named for a white slaver.
And I honestly believe it’s the wrong choice. One big reason: until they do change their name, this controversy will continue. It doesn’t matter what programs they put in place, what money they spend — they are still named for and honoring a white slaver. They will always be, at some level, fighting against this until they commit to the change. In many ways, they can’t fully move forward on this issue until they do, and it’s going to be a continuing stress point for the organization until it happens.
The second, to me bigger reason: the name itself implies their diversity initiatives will fail. When out birding, if I run into other birders, I like to chat with them. One thing I’ll often ask is if they’re a member of different groups, whether Audubon, ABA, etc. I’ve found it very common while chatting with non-white birders that the name Audubon makes joining a non-starter. They simply won’t consider it because of who it’s named for. In the last year or so, I’ve started hearing that more frequently among white birders, especially women.
You cannot make your organization diverse when there are aspects of your organization that make those diverse groups join you a non-started. The Audubon name is a non-starter for many of the diverse birders I’ve chatted with in the last couple of years. All the press releases about good intentions will not change that.
Not changing the name also makes it more difficult for the local chapters; if National Audubon had chosen to take that step, it would have made it easier for the locals to also take that step. Now, locals have to do so without the precedent of the National leading them forward. What was difficult, nuanced and complicated is now more so for them.
Of course, I’ve never seen any indication that National Audubon cares about the locals, so, sigh.
Ultimately, National Audubon is going to have to revisit this decision. I hope (but am not expecting) they do so sooner rather than later. I have the feeling the continuing struggle to get their own internal affairs in order — losing two diversity execs shows they have a lot of work to do to become a healthy organization again — and that may have influenced this decision a bit. I hope Ms. Gray can get the challenges internal and the resistance to change under control, and when she does, take a fresh look at this.
But for me, for now, I continue to choose not to give money to the organization, and I’m disappointed they took what might have been the correct step — for now — on the naming problem. But it doesn’t solve that problem, merely defer it to the future, and I really wish they had been ready and willing to make a better choice. To me, they chose the safer and easier choice over the correct one.
I think — from the outside looking in — that they are moving in a better direction now than a year ago, but it’s going slowly, and they have a lot more to do. Here’s hoping in another year, I can feel good about donating to them again. But I’m not right now too hopeful.
