Rosalie Edge

Rosalie Barrow Edge was fifty-two years old and summering in Paris when she opened the pamphlet that ignited her second act as a conservation firebrand. The 1929 booklet, titled A Crisis in Conservation, described the alarming decline of dozens of species of North American birds, and railed against the National Association of Audubon Societies — the forerunner of today’s National Audubon Society — for its backroom dealing with organizations representing sportsmen who were gunning down game birds by the tens of thousands.

Edge, a veteran suffragist and wealthy New York socialite, was spurred to action. Soon after her liner arrived back in New York, she marched straight to the organization’s twenty-fifth annual meeting and took a seat in the front row. After listening to Audubon founder T. Gilbert Pearson and his board of directors scorn the pamphlet for its “palpable unfairness,” Edge stood to speak.

“Just as she used to question and tire her grade school teachers at Miss Doremus’s Finishing School, she began her interrogation,”