For the American Ornithological Society, it’s time to say bye-bye to bias.
In the fall of 2023, the group announced its English Common Names Project, which will rename all American birds named after people.
While it might seem harmless for animals to be named after people of historic significance, as it turns out, many of those names carry fraught — and often oppressive — legacies.
For instance, the Audubon’s shearwater is a bird named after John James Audubon, a famous bird illustrator … who was also a slave owner who opposed abolition. Or take Scott’s oriole, a species connected to U.S. Civil War general Winfield Scott, who oversaw the forced displacement of Indigenous peoples in what became the Trail of Tears.
“There has been historic bias in how birds are named, and who might have a bird named in their honor,” AOS executive director and CEO Judith Scarl said in a statement.
“Exclusionary naming conventions developed in the 1800s, clouded by racism and misogyny, don’t work for us today, and the time has come for us to transform the process and redirect the focus to the birds, where it belongs.”
This decision follows pressure from birders and nature lovers to reconcile with this problematic past. In fact, in 2020, a movement was by two ornithologists called “Bird Names For Birds,” stressing that “birds don’t need eponymous or honorific common names.”
The founder of Bird Names For Birds, Jordan Rutter, said the petition came to be after an infamous news story gained traction in 2020. In June of that year, a Black man named Christian Cooper, was in Central Park birdwatching, as he often did.
A white woman, Amy Cooper, was also in the park, taking her dog on a walk. The dog startled Christian, and he asked the woman to leash her dog, per park rules. Amy then called the police, falsely claiming “an African-American man is threatening my life.”
A video of the incident went viral, and it spurred a racial reckoning in the birding community.
It wasn’t a wake-up call,” Rutter told The New York Times, but brought “long-known but not highlighted issues to the forefront of the bird community.”
Following the incident, bird lovers responded by creating Black Birders Week, and groups like the Bird Union and Chicago Bird Alliance changed their names, so as not to be affiliated with the aforementioned Audubon.
Then, finally, combined with the pressure of Rutter’s campaign and ongoing anti-racist efforts in the birding world, the American Ornithological Society announced the formation of an ad hoc committee to figure out the best way to proceed with controversial bird names.
Now, we’re here.
The new renaming process will focus on more descriptive names about the birds’ habitats or physical features and will be led by a new committee of the AOS, which, according to a statement, promises to “broaden participation by including a diverse representation of individuals with expertise in the social sciences, communications, ornithology, and taxonomy.”
“There is power in a name, and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today. We need a much more inclusive and engaging scientific process that focuses attention on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves,” AOS President Colleen Handel, Ph.D., said in a statement.
“Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely — and birds need our help now more than ever.”
You may also like: The joy of birdwatching: Research shows it can improve mental health and foster a sense of wellbeing
A version of this article was originally published in The 2024 Animals Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren (CC BY 2.0)
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