Image: Tundra Swan, John James Audubon

Our Board’s Decision

We are proud to announce our new name – the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance. Members at our June 9 meeting voted overwhelmingly to adopt the name. We have some work to do to complete the transition, but have already adopted a new logo. We hope you like it as much as we do.

I commend my fellow Board members, our legions of dedicated volunteers, our many thousands of members, and the community groups that worked with us and provided input – for their valuable perspectives and insights, their steadfast encouragement, and their patience as we undertook this long and deliberative process.

Why Northern Virginia Bird Alliance?

We now have a name that we feel better communicates our mission and our focus on birds! The name feels welcoming and inviting and is free of the negative associations the Audubon name raises for some people. The new name identifies people and partnerships as essential to our work. It delineates our geographic reach. And it aligns us with a nationwide network of organizations which also are adopting the Bird Alliance name. 

We remain an active chapter of the National Audubon Society. And we will continue to collaborate with other chapters and with local, regional, and state organizations to advance our conservation objectives. Our Wildlife Sanctuary (formerly Audubon at Home) and Stretch Our Parks programs remain collaborative programs with the aim of creating and conserving wildlife habitat.

It was not an easy decision to remove “Audubon” from our name, but we learned first-hand that John James Audubon’s legacy of racism and scientific fraud was a barrier to many individuals, especially in younger and more diverse groups, who might otherwise join our efforts. Because conservation requires the cooperation and effort of many people to protect the environment for future generations, and because northern Virginia is increasingly diverse and under rapid development pressure, our Board of Directors felt the best way to achieve our mission was to adopt a more welcoming and inclusive name. We are grateful our membership agreed.

By changing our name, we are not erasing history. Audubon’s positive contributions remain regardless of our name. We also celebrate all the wonderful work done under the Audubon name over many decades by our organization and its people. In fact, we feel that our new name will enable us to build on all of that passion and hard work to deliver a brighter future for nature.

What does this mean for us going forward?

In addition to changing our name, we also have chosen a tagline that will often accompany our name, “Conserving and Enjoying Nature.” The tagline recognizes that we work to preserve more than birds; it identifies conservation as our first priority so that we can help provide access to and enjoyment of birds and nature now and into the future.

We are at an exciting turning point. We are making plans to move forward vigorously with our mission, with renewed focus on finding ways to engage all of northern Virginia’s communities in our efforts to protect birds and nature in our region. We hope our new name enables more people to enjoy, participate in, and improve our shared work. 

We recognize this is a significant change for our organization. We have a strong, decades-long history of conservation, education, and advocacy, but we believe the change will enable even greater success. We recognize that there are those who felt that we should not change our name, but we hope that our commitment to our mission and our shared love of birds and nature will unite us all in moving forward toward a more joyous, bird-filled future. Thank you for being an ally. If you want to volunteer to work with us, visit our website here.