Friends of Merrymeeting Bay’s sixth presentation of its 28th annual Winter Speaker Series, “Rosalie Edge, 1877-1962: Hellcat of Conservation,” features author and journalist Dyana Furmansky.
The presentation is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 12, via Zoom and accessible at the top of fomb.org.
Rosalie Edge. Submitted photo
Edge is considered the godmother of the modern environmental movement. From her earlier activities in the women’s suffrage movement and after learning about the corruption amongst directors of the National Association of Audubon Societies — including their collusion with commercial wildlife harvesters — Edge, along with Irving Brant and Willard Van Name, created the Emergency Conservation Committee to reform the Audubon Association, according to a news release from Ed Friedman with Friends.
As part of her work for the committee, of which she was chair for 30 years, she campaigned to preserve 8,000 acres of sugar pines on the southern edge of Yosemite National Park, campaigned for the creation of Olympic and Kings Canyon National Parks, and created a wildlife sanctuary at Hawk Mountain in eastern Pennsylvania.
Edge biographer Furmansky will talk about the rise of Rosalie, her numerous accomplishments in conservation, and her disappearance from history.
Dyana Furmansky Submitted photo
Furmansky wrote for The New York Times, Audubon, High Country News, Sierra and other publications. Her series on water issues in the West with a small team of writers from High Country News won the George Polk Award, the first given for environmental writing, in 1985.
In addition to the Colorado Book Award-winning “Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature from the Conservationists,” she wrote “These American Lands,” a history of public lands. She lives in Colorado and Arizona.
The Zoom registration link is available at fomb.org a week or so prior to the presentation.
Speaker Series presentations are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Friends at 207-666-3372 or edfomb@comcast.net.
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