Eighty bird species will be renamed ‘to break links with ‘slavery and racism’

Birds in the United States and Canada will no longer be named after people because the previous selection process was “clouded by racism and misogyny”, the American Ornithological Society has announced.

The organisation will rename 80 species next year due to their associations with controversial historical figures, including slave owners and white supremacists.

Birds that will be renamed include Audubon’s shearwater, a tropical seabird widespread in the Atlantic Ocean that honours John James Audubon, a 19th-century slave owner and perhaps America’s best-known ornithologist.

Townsend’s warbler and solitaire will also get new names. John Kirk Townsend, who died in 1851, stole skulls from indigenous graves and believed they were racially inferior.

Colleen Handel, the society’s president, said: “There is power in a name and some English bird names have associations with the past that continue to be exclusionary and harmful today. Everyone who loves and cares about birds should be able to enjoy and study them freely.”

The society said that rather than go through each bird name individually to assess whether it had links to a controversial person, it would make blanket changes.

There had been a heated debate within the birdwatching community over the names given to species. An increasingly vocal faction demanded historical figures with links to slavery or colonialism be removed from names.

The society said it would aim for descriptive titles about a bird’s habitat or physical features instead. Judith Scarl, the society’s executive director and chief executive, said too many historical figures who had been honoured in bird names were racist.

She said: “As scientists, we work to eliminate bias in science. But there has been historic bias in how birds are named and who might have a bird named in their honour. Exclusionary naming conventions developed in the 1800s, clouded by racism and misogyny, don’t work for us today.”

According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, 42.6 million people took trips to observe wild birds last year.

This year progressive naturalists were defeated in attempts to rename the National Audubon Society, the bird protection organisation. The board of directors voted against it.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/eighty-bird-species-will-be-renamed-to-break-links-with-slavery-and-racism/news-story/588b524c80bb457eb9f967744203682a

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