Image: King Rails, John James Audubon

To Our Friends

Dear Friend of ASNV:

As I described in the September President’s Corner, ASNV’s Board of Directors will vote later this year on whether keeping the Audubon name will best enable us to fulfill our mission today and in the future. This will be a complex decision involving many issues, including:

  • Audubon’s contributions to ornithology and the connection his name has for many people to bird conservation

  • Audubon’s personal behavior, which includes his enslavement of Black people and assisting eugenics research by collecting skulls for a colleague

To prepare for that vote, we made information available about John James Audubon here and tried to answer some of your frequently asked questions here. Using a survey, we sought input from members, friends, and others who care about nature in order to learn how we can best serve the region. We closed our online survey on October 15. 

We know that consideration of this issue necessarily involves the interests of all of northern Virginia’s increasingly diverse populations. More information is available here on our recent efforts to engage a broader range of our region’s population.

Thank you for your continuing interest in our organization and its work. We will keep you informed about our progress in our monthly newsletter.

Elizabeth “Libby” Lyons
President

View our full lineup of classes, events, bird walks and more on our calendar.