Petition to American Orn. Soc. to protest blanket purge of eponyms

[Van Remsen]

Illinois Birders: I’m sure most of you have heard about the decision by the Am. Orn. Soc. leadership to cancel all eponyms, starting first with 80 or so North American birds, more than 40 of which are on the Illinois list. Lewis & Clark are among those scheduled to be purged (of Lewis’s Woodpecker and Clark’s Nutcracker). All 240+ eponymous bird names in the W. Hemisphere are on the eventual hit list. The North American Classification Committee (widely referred to in past as “AOU Checklist Committee) voted 12-0 to reject a blanket purge and in favor of due process for the few names considered offensive or exclusionary; we were among the only people (on the condition of secrecy!) among the 2,800 AOS members allowed to see and comment on the recommendation of the AOS ad hoc English Bird Names Committee before the decision was made by leadership.

Why should you care? At this point all organizations that follow AOS classification, including eBird, will have to use the newly coined names even though you had no say in the decision. If you oppose the blanket purge of all honorific bird names, or even if you are just upset by the way this was handled by AOS leadership, please hit the link below and “sign” the petition, which already has more than 4300 signatures of people who feel the same way, including many prominent birders and ornithologists. Your name will be hidden from public view unless you add comments (but I would encourage you to add your comments]:

https://chng.it/VHyjZp5snr

The petition contains links to several essays and publications on why purging all eponyms is a bad idea. The theme of the petition is that there are more productive and less divisive ways to address racism than dishonoring the many founders of American ornithology, and that a case-by-case basis id the way to eliminate those names considered harmful.

The AOS website links to the report and its arguments for a total purge, which has also been endorsed by Cornell Lab of Ornithology/eBird and the ABA leadership. In contrast, those opposed to the total purge have no resources with which to protest other than with such a grass-roots petition. Attempts to post links to the petition to some state listservs and Facebook groups have been blocked.

I hope that my post not devolve into a divisive debate on CIB over the pros and cons of eponyms. At this point, I think almost every point of view, for or against a total purge of them, has already been expressed in other forums, so a sequence of back-and-forth statements are unlikely to do anything but cause more friction. Those opposed to the purge can put their comments with their signature at the petition rather than on CIB. I also emphasize this is NOT about whether you personally like or dislike eponyms but rather about tolerance of and respect for opposing views. Those who do like eponyms, or simply object to a major destabilization of names, many used for more than a century, simply would like to keep their tiny market share of less than 5% of our bird names rather than have their opinion dismissed.

Van Remsen