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*** Friends was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas ***
Florida Women Key to Forming Conservation Groups
Published Friday, March 5, 2004
EARLY ENVIRONMENTALISTS
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Marjory Stoneman Douglas, seen here in 1965 in a Miccosukee canoe, was one of several women who fought to protect Florida's environment. Florida Photographic Collection |
By Gary White
The Ledger
The environmental movement in America began as a reaction to what was on the heads of women.
In the late 19th century, hats worn by ladies of fashion teemed with the feathers -- and sometimes the entire carcasses -- of birds. The demand of milliners in New York and Paris created a lucrative market, and "plume hunters" eagerly supplied it, with the swamps of southern Florida their most abundant source.
The breeding plumage, or "aigrettes," of snowy egrets and other wading birds at one time yielded more than their weight in gold, and gun-wielding hunters decimated one rookery after another, from St. Petersburg to the Keys.
As word of the slaughter slowly emerged, a small clutch of Americans became conscientious objectors in the war on birds. Fittingly, some of the leaders of the campaign were women, both nationally and in Florida, where the Florida Audubon Society this week celebrates its 104th anniversary.
One founder of what is now known as Audubon of Florida was Mary Barr Munroe, the wife of a nature writer named Kirk Munroe. In a history of Florida Audubon published in 1935, Lucy Worthington Blackman vividly described Mary Munroe's method of educating women on the plume trade.
"Wheresoe'er Mrs. Munroe's keen eye saw an aigrette waving," Blackman wrote, "there she followed, and cornering the wearer -- be it on the street, in the crowded hotel lobby, on the beach, at church or entertainment or party -- there compelled her to listen to the story of cruelty and murder of which her vanity was the contributing cause." Babson Park resident Helen Morrison, an ardent advocate for environmental protection during the past 50 years, along with her husband, Ken, appreciates the work of her forebears.
"I'm sure in those early days any woman who had feelings for nature and for wildlife and for the beauty of Florida would have been very concerned and upset when she learned what was going on and certainly would have done everything she could to get people to spread the word that this was not a good thing that was happening in Florida," Morrison says.
The ravages of the plume trade prompted magazine publisher George Bird Grinnell in 1886 to form The Audubon Society, a national group named for the famed nature artist John James Audubon. The society soon proved too much for Grinnell to manage. But a decade later, Boston socialite Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna B. Hall led the creation of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Other states soon followed suit.
When the movement reached Florida at the turn of the 20th century, women again made a major contribution. Louis and Clara Dommerich, New Yorkers with a winter home just north of Orlando in Maitland, had become so alarmed at the tales of depredation coming out of the Everglades that they decided lightly populated Florida needed its own Audubon chapter.
On the afternoon of March 2, 1900, 10 women and five men gathered inside the Dommeriches' home and agreed to form the Florida Audubon Society, joining 24 existing state chapters.
Henry B. Whipple, Florida Audubon's first president, lauded Secretary-Treasurer Clara Dommerich as the leading force behind the new organization. She died the following November at the age of 43.
Other women soon emerged to bolster the cause of conservation. One was Katherine Tippetts, who founded the St. Petersburg Audubon Society in 1909 and served as its president for 33 years. Tippetts persuaded several cities in Pinellas County to declare themselves as bird sanctuaries.
Tippetts headed the Florida Aubudon Society from 1920 to 1924, and she remains the only woman to hold the president's position. During her tenure, Audubon successfully lobbied the state Legislature for environmental instruction in schools and the creation of a game commission.
Other organizations soon took up the cause Audubon had started in Florida.
May Mann Jennings, wife of former Gov. William Jennings, became president of the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs in 1914. Among other causes, the Jacksonville resident took up an issue first promoted by Mary Barr Munroe -- the preservation of Paradise Key, the state's largest stand of royal palms.
Jennings' lobbying led the state to set aside land for Royal Palm State Park, the first step in the creation of a state park system. She later joined the successful campaign to have the Everglades protected as a federal park, and she sat on the bandstand when President Harry Truman dedicated Everglades National Park on Dec. 6, 1947.
A month before that historic ceremony, a former newspaper reporter named Marjory Stoneman Douglas published "Everglades: River of Grass." The book, a meticulously researched portrait of the delicate ecosystem and the changes wrought to it by humans, became one of the most influential environmental books published in America.
The writer eventually discarded journalistic detachment in favor of full-fledged advocacy. In the late 1960s, Douglas formed Friends of the Everglades in opposition to a proposed airport in Big Cypress Swamp, just north of the park. (The airport project was later scrapped.)
Douglas, who lived to age 108, was a cantankerous advocate for the Everglades with little patience for political games. Late in her life, she angrily demanded removal of her name from an Everglades bill when the Florida Legislature weakened its provisions. Douglas died in 1998.
Douglas was sometimes confused with another environmental gadfly, Marjorie Harris Carr of Gainesville. Carr, who held a master's degree in zoology, became alarmed in the early 1960s at the effect the planned CrossFlorida Barge Canal would have on the Ocklawah River, a graceful waterway she once studied.
Carr led a local campaign by the Alachua Audubon Society that grew into a national fight. She founded Florida Defenders of the Environment, a nonprofit group whose federal lawsuit yielded a judge's injunction against the Army Corps of Engineers. A few days later in 1971, President Richard Nixon halted the canal project.
A greenway covering much of the planned canal course through northern Florida is named for Carr, who died in 1997.
Helen Morrison, who has been active in conservation issues since moving to Babson Park with her husband in 1956, says she was fortunate to know such notable women as Douglas and Carr. She expresses gratitude toward the women of conservation who preceded her.
"It certainly is interesting and important for Florida that women have kept at that," Morrison says. "We owe our appreciation to these early pioneers for writing and speaking out on issues that are important today."
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or at 863-802-7518.
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