A History of Bird-Banding and Wildlife Conservation in 20th-century North America

FAIN: FT-265053-19

Kristoffer Whitney
RIT (Rochester, NY 14623-5698)

Research and writing articles for academic and general audiences on the history of bird-banding and its relationship to environmental science.

I propose to use the NEH Summer Stipend to complete an academic article on the environmental and cultural history of bird-banding and its relationship to 20th-century conservation, as well write a shorter piece on the same subjects targeted toward a broader, popular audience online. The art and science of affixing coded markers to migratory birds (and other animals), banding was at the heart of twentieth-century wildlife management, ecology, ethology, and what could anachronistically be called environmentalism. My primary exemplar will be the biography and work of Margaret Morse Nice. Examining this history sheds light on an understudied part of American scientific, political, and cultural heritage: times in our collective past (stretching into the present) when citizens of all stripes—across divides of gender, class, and education—were an integral part of understanding and protecting nonhuman nature.

Associated Products

Margaret Morse Nice thought like a song sparrow and changed how scientists understand animal behavior (Article)
Title: Margaret Morse Nice thought like a song sparrow and changed how scientists understand animal behavior
Author: Kristoffer Whitney
Abstract: Margaret Morse Nice thought like a song sparrow and changed how scientists understand animal behavior.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://theconversation.com/margaret-morse-nice-thought-like-a-song-sparrow-and-changed-how-scientists-understand-animal-behavior-123734
Access Model: open access
Format: Other
Periodical Title: The Conversation
Publisher: The Conversation

Bird Banding and the Environmental Humanities: Institutions, Intersubjectivities, and the Phenomenological Method of Margaret Morse Nice (Article)
Title: Bird Banding and the Environmental Humanities: Institutions, Intersubjectivities, and the Phenomenological Method of Margaret Morse Nice
Author: Kristoffer Whitney
Abstract: This article tells a history of bird banding—the practice of catching and affixing birds with durable bands with the intent of tracking their movements and behavior—by focusing on the embodied aspects of this method in field ornithology. Going beyond a straightforward, institutional history of bird banding, the article uses the writings of biologists in the US Bureau of Biological Survey and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to describe the historical practices of bird banding and the phenomenological experience of banding, both for the scientists and the birds (via their banding interlocutors). The article then presents the career and research of Margaret Morse Nice as an exemplar of the embodied practice of banding for the purposes of understanding bird behavior. Finally the article uses the example and heritage of Nice as well as banders and scientists like her to discuss a phenomenological approach common to any number of observation-based field biology disciplines (including, especially, ethology) and deep connections between human and animal subjectivities. And these connections, in turn, have implications for the environmental humanities, environmental conservation, and the ethics of knowing the nonhuman world.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article/13/1/113/173443/Bird-Banding-and-the-Environmental
Secondary URL: https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8867230
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Environmental Humanities
Publisher: Duke University Press

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