Birds will no longer be named after people in the Americas – 12/11/2023 – Science

The AOS (American Ornithological Society, or, in free translation, American ornithological society), the organization responsible for standardizing bird names in English in the Americas, announced on the 1st of this month that it will rename all species that honor people. Bird names derived from people, it said in a statement, can be harmful, exclusive and distract “from the focus, appreciation or consideration of the birds themselves.”

This means that Audubon’s shearwater (Puffinuslherminieri), found on the southeast coast of the United States, will no longer be named after John James Audubon, a famous bird illustrator and slave owner who was completely opposed to abolition.

Scott’s oriole (Icterus parisorum), a black and yellow bird that inhabits the North American Southwest and Mexico, will also receive a new name, which will sever ties with U.S. Civil War general Winfield Scott, who oversaw the forced displacement of indigenous people in 1838 in the episode that became known as “Path of Tears”.

The organization’s decision is a response to pressure from birdwatchers to correct the recognition of historical figures with racist or colonialist pasts. The renaming process will aim for names that are more descriptive of the birds’ habitats or physical characteristics and is part of a broader effort in science toward more welcoming and inclusive environments.

“We’re doing this to right some historical wrongs,” said Judith Scarl, executive director of AOS. She said the change could help “involve even more people in appreciating, protecting and studying birds.”

Supporters of the measure said many English names for birds are degrading reminders of oppression, slavery and genocide, according to a 2020 petition addressed to AOS. The text was written by the Bird Names for Birds initiative, founded by two ornithologists to question the use of these names, classified as “verbal statues” that reflect the values ​​of the names of those they honor.

But some birdwatchers, while expressing sympathy for the cause, said they weren’t sure this was the right route to take. “I’m not too excited, but I’m not too disappointed either,” said Jeff Marks, an ornithologist with Montana Bird Advocacy.

“We’re going to lose some knowledge about some key people in the history of ornithology, and that saddens me,” Marks added. “But maybe overall it’s not that important.”

Jordan Rutter, one of the founders of Bird Names for Birds, said the petition was inspired by an encounter in Central Park in 2020 when a white woman made a false report to police that Christian Cooper, a Black birdwatcher, was threatening -The.

“It wasn’t the defining wake-up call,” Rutter said, but it brought “long-known but not highlighted issues to the community.”

The encounter in Central Park inspired the creation of Black Birders Week, an annual campaign to celebrate the lives and careers of Black birders, which then triggered an avalanche of similar initiatives in the sciences, amid a reckoning race across the country. In 2021, the Entomological Society of America began the Better Common Names Project to change the names of insects considered inappropriate or pejorative. Astronomers have also advocated the renaming of large telescopes that they say disregard the names of people from marginalized groups.

In birding communities, efforts to retire problematic names have had mixed results. The Bird Union and Chicago Bird Alliance recently changed their names to avoid an association with Audubon. But the National Audubon Society’s board of directors voted to keep its name this year, saying the organization’s mission transcended one person’s story.

In 2022, the AOS announced the formation of a committee to determine how to address controversial bird names. Group members met every two weeks for months, discussing topics such as the importance of name stability and how to determine the criteria for changing a bird’s name.

Last week’s announcement is the result of that effort. In its statement, the American entity committed to changing all bird names derived from people and to assembling a diverse group to oversee the renaming process, which would include input from the general public. More than a hundred species of birds in the Americas will receive new names.

“The idea of ​​changing a lot of names means, for a lot of people — including me, initially — throwing away a lot of history,” said John Fitzpatrick, an ornithologist at Cornell University. He said he initially thought bird names should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but that later discussions convinced him that “there is no formula by which we can figure out which names are good enough.”

Only the common English names of birds will change, since the scientific names — which are traditionally in Latin — are governed by a rigid and universal set of rules that consider the evolutionary relationships between species. (Latin designations based on people’s names also exist, such as captain fitzpatricki for the “sira barbet”, a Peruvian bird named in honor of Fitzpatrick.)

The decision to change the birds’ common names “makes perfect sense” to Cooper, whose fame led him to host a National Geographic birdwatching program. “There’s no reason to have a person’s name associated with a bird, because that doesn’t say anything about the bird.”

Cooper mentioned Wilson’s warbler (Cardellina pusilla), a canary bird with a characteristic black spot on its head. Changing the name to something “like black-hatted warbler,” he said, would give birders a better idea of ​​what to look for.

But to Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago and avid bird watcher, the need for more descriptive names didn’t seem urgent. Acts like this “are profoundly harmful to science,” he said. “We can’t go back into the history of science and erase everyone who wasn’t perfect human beings.” Coyne added that the effort to update so many names would be better spent on something more impactful on society, like teaching underprivileged children about birds.

The AOS organization plans to begin a renaming program next year, starting with about ten birds. Eventually, the program will expand to encompass all named birds honored in the United States and Canada, and then move to Central and South American species, which is the extent of the society’s naming jurisdiction.

Carlos Daniel Cadena, an ornithologist at the University of the Andes in Colombia and leader of the English Bird Names Committee, expects the changes to involve a small learning curve, but he also sees a new opportunity for the public connect through birds.

“It’s going to be a field where we all need to learn together,” Cadena said.

He noted that the process can be adjusted for birds in Latin American countries, where people commonly refer to them by their scientific names.

With thousands of species in the Americas, birds are as diverse as the communities that enjoy them. “They are by far the most accessible and beloved feature of biodiversity around the world,” Fitzpatrick said. More colorful names, he said, would increase “the ease with which new birders of all types” can appreciate them.