On Tuesday, April 22, at 7:00 pm come to The Last Heath Hen: An Extinction Story with Author Christie Palmer Lowrance.
Join us at NCTC on Earth Day 2025 for a 7:00 pm presentation by Christie Palmer Lowrance on her recent book The Last Heath Hen: An Extinction Story. The book draws on first-person accounts by naturalist Thornton Burgess and ornithologist Dr. Alfred Gross as well as archival video film footage restored by Bowdoin College and the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Despite conservation effort over decades, the Heath Hen species went extinct on the island of Martha's Vineyard in 1933.
As the only known North American extinction of which the last individual in the wild has been documented, the story of the Heath Hen is uniquely important to the record of American conservation. It also marks one of the earliest species conservation efforts in the world.
Bowdoin College ornithologist Alfred Gross and naturalist and children's author Thornton Burgess surveyed the dwindling population until only one remained, a healthy male, which they captured, banded, briefly held, and released back into nature.
However, many complex factors, both human and natural, thwarted prolonged efforts to prevent this irreplaceable loss, and in 1933 on the island of Martha's Vineyard, the Heath Hen species was officially declared extinct. The Last Heath Hen is intended as a tool to help teachers, conservationists, parents and librarians explore with children the complex subject of extinction.
Lowrance will also discuss Nature's Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess: a 20th century conservation influencer, best known as a children's author, but who played a vital role in passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, among other conservation efforts.
Biographer, researcher, and historian Christie Palmer Lowrance is the author of Nature's Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess and The Last Heath Hen: An Extinction Story. She has taught writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and lives in Sandwich, MA.
This public lecture will be held in the Byrd Auditorium at the National Conservation Training Center, 698 Conservation Way, Shepherdstown, WV 25443.
This presentation will be recorded and available online April 29, at 2:00pm ET at: https://www.youtube.com/@usfws/streams
No tickets or reservations are required. All are welcome!
For more information, please contact Mark Madison (304-876-7276) at mark_madison@fws.gov.
