NWHP  Blog
Women’s History Month
By Dyana Z. Furmansky

Getting a Word in Rosalie Edge-Wise, in 10 seconds with  Al Gore

In November 2009 I was Number 41 at Denver’s Tattered Cover Bookstore, waiting for Vice President Al Gore to autograph my copy of his latest book about climate change. I also carried a copy of my latest book, a biography called “Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature From The Conservationists.” I planned to give it to Gore when I got my ten seconds of face time with him. 
Gore often declares that Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 book “Silent Spring,” is his environmental heroine.  I thought he would like to know that the field of environmental heroines is somewhat deeper than Carson—and indeed, the entire environmental movement up to the Honorable Vice President—owes a very great deal to a neglected New York socialite and suffragist named Rosalie Edge. Edge, who in 1929 singlehandedly wielded suffragist methods against slothful, even corrupt conservationists, can be considered the nation’s first environmentalist. That word had not yet been invented.  In Edge’s day she was called “the most honest, unselfish, indomitable hellcat in the history of conservation.”
In my ten seconds I wanted to tell Gore that well-behaved women do make history, when the alternative is a woman who is not considered  well-behaved. That is how the hellcat Edge came to be eclipsed by Gore’s heroine Carson, repeatedly commended for being gentle. In the 1960s, the perception of a woman’s character could determine whether she would get her  place in history.
The irony is that for the 30 years prior to Carson, Edge was the nation’s most influential voice against the indiscriminate use of pesticides and toxins. I wanted to say to Gore that in 1960 Carson was sent to Edge’s Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania for data on the declining eagle migration and its relation to the growing use of the pesticide DDT. Edge founded Hawk Mountain in 1934, as the world’s first preserve for predatory birds, and it was just one of her monumental and widespread achievements.  Some others: the establishment of Olympic and Kings Canyon National Parks; preserving sugar pines in Yosemite from the ax and the falls in Yellowstone from diversion. Edge was also an inspiration to founders of The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, and EDFa s well as reformer of the National Audubon Society and Sierra Club.
Edge was the person who, like Gore today, aroused the public on issues it had never taken an interest in before—the sustainability of nature, and the duty of every person to keep the earth’s balance.  If Gore knew all this, he might add Edge to his personal pantheon of heroic women in conservation.
But when my turn came to stand in front of Gore, there was no time to say all this.  The vice president glanced at me and then looked down to scribble his signature.  “Mr. Gore,” I said, when he looked up, startled.
             My presentation boiled down to this: “Rachel Carson stands on the shoulders of this woman”—I pointed to the cover of my book showing a stark photo of Edge posing with a red-tail hawk perched on her white-gloved wrist. “This woman’s name is Rosalie Edge.” Gore replied he had not heard of her.
 “I ask you to please read “Hawk of Mercy” so that you will and help restore Edge to history,” I added, as he took the book from me. My ten seconds were up. Gore replied that he would read the book. 
If he has not read it yet, then perhaps he will during this year’s Women’s History Month.
 
ED note: This blog entry includes an attachement for a jpeg photo of the cover of “Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature From The Consevationists.”

Follow Dyana’s blog “Unpacking Rosalie Edge, Slowly”