Audubon Naturalist Society

Overview of ANS's Advocacy Efforts

ANS’s conservation ethic and efforts go back to its formative years. The organization was founded in 1897 by a group of people who strongly objected to the killing of egrets and herons for their feathers. The all-volunteer organization helped push local laws that forbade any bird destruction, and they worked with District of Columbia planners to protect parklands and green spaces.

On a larger scale, the organization rallied support for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, and members and supporters helped organize the first federal bird-banding efforts in 1920. Ten years later, the Society formally endorsed a Senate bill protecting the bald eagle, which finally became law in 1940.

Before WWII, the Society’s regional conservation work included protecting Virginia’s Roaches Run, which was threatened by airport development. The organization’s proud commitment to conservation continued in the 1950s, when ANS testified on Capitol Hill in support of conserving the natural beauty along the 185-mile Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, at left. We walked with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on his historic eight-day hike from Washington, D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland, in opposition to a highway planned for its entire length.

In the 1960s, we supported the neighbors and friends of Glover-Archbold Park, when a superhighway from Georgetown to Bethesda was slated to cut it in half. At the same time, we stood in opposition to the Three Sisters Bridge, an eight-laner planned from Interstate 66 near Sprout Run in Arlington to Canal Road in Georgetown. (Construction of the bridge was halted when a court of law determined that proper procedures hadn’t been followed and alternatives to the road hadn’t been adequately considered). During this time, the organization’s volunteer staff also appeared before congressional committees to promote laws protecting golden eagles, to publicize the latest findings on pesticide contamination, and to provide technical assistance to the new Open Spaces Program.

ANS advocates helped organize a press conference at Drew Elementary School in Silver Spring, MD, at top. The school lies along the route of the planned Intercounty Connector, and health experts, legislators, parents, and students testified at the 2008 event about health risks associated with the road. Water quality monitors, at bottom, regularly monitor area streams.

On both sides of the river, our advocates continue to testify at public hearings, attend planning board and county council meetings, and be, in effect, the eyes and ears of our members, who are concerned with local air and water quality as well as habitat diversity. Our expertise and experience on land use issues makes ANS a potent force on transportation-related challenges facing our region.

Currently, we continue to lead the battle against the Intercounty Connector (ICC), a environmentally destructive project in Maryland suburbs. We are also active watchdogs over Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve, and we sit at the table of the Tysons Corner Task Force, charged with the redesign of this urban area.

Our water quality monitoring program, which began in 1994, trains scores of volunteers, who monitor more than 50 streams in the Washington region. More recent efforts include organizing a network of civic and environmental groups to raise a unified voice for local watershed protection. Our ongoing transportation and land use activities put us in good position to work on climate change issues affecting this area, our latest campaign effort. As it has from the beginning, conservation advocacy will be an honored part of ANS’s mission far into the future.

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