Birds in the Americas will no longer be named after people

The American Ornithological Society, the organization responsible for standardizing English bird names across the Americas, announced Nov. 1 that it would rename all species honoring people. Bird names derived from people, the society said in a statement, can be harmful, exclusive and detract from “the focus, appreciation or consideration of the birds themselves.”

That means the Audubon’s shearwater, found off the coast of the Southeastern United States, will no longer have a name acknowledging John James Audubon, a famous bird illustrator and a slave owner who adamantly opposed abolition. The Scott’s oriole, a black-and-yellow bird inhabiting the Southwest and Mexico, will also receive a new moniker, which will sever ties to U.S. Civil War Gen. Winfield Scott, who oversaw the forced relocation of Indigenous peoples in 1838 that eventually became the Trail of Tears.

The organization’s decision is a response to pressure from birders to redress the recognition of historical figures with racist or colonial pasts. The renaming process will aim for more descriptive names about the birds’ habitats or physical features and is part of a broader push in science for more welcoming, inclusive environments.

“We’re really doing this to address some historic wrongs,” said Judith Scarl, executive director of the American Ornithological Society. Scarl said the change would help “engage even more people in enjoying and protecting and studying birds.”

Advocates of this change believe that many English common names for birds are “isolating and demeaning reminders of oppression, slavery and genocide,” according to a petition in 2020 that was addressed to the American Ornithological Society. The petition was written by Bird Names for Birds, an initiative founded by two ornithologists to confront the issue of these bird names, which it describes as “verbal statues” reflecting the values of their eponyms.

But some birders, while expressing sympathy for the cause, said that they were unsure that this was the right route to take. “I’m not super enthusiastic about it, but neither am I super disappointed about it,” said Jeff Marks, an ornithologist at the Montana Bird Advocacy.

“We’ll lose a little bit of knowledge about some key people in the history of ornithology, and that saddens me,” Marks said. “But maybe in the scheme of things that’s just not that big of a deal.”

Jordan Rutter, a founder of Bird Names for Birds, said the petition was inspired by what became a momentous encounter in Central Park in 2020, when a white woman falsely reported to police that Christian Cooper, a Black birder, was threatening her.

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

The Central Park encounter inspired the creation of Black Birders Week, an annual campaign to celebrate the lives and careers of Black birders.