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National Audubon’s Annual Convention: 
{ Convincing Program, A Flood of People 
by WALLACE W. KIRKLAND, JR. 
\ mid-America flood of people—1,178—pre-registered and more appeared 
or the National Audubon Society’s 64th Annual Convention in St. Louis 
n April. At this confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi, the April flood 
vaters crested at 28 feet, and from the top of the Gateway Arch, tree trunks 
‘ould be seen floating by the spot where 166 years ago Lewis and Clark 
aw dead buffalo. 
It was appropriate that at this meeting there was an overwhelmingly 
onvincing flood of data incriminating DDT and hard pesticides by ecologists, 
hemists, and the man in the field—Sandy Sprunt. His 8th Bald Eagle 
status Report definitely blamed it for the steep decline in nesting success 
~ the coastal Atlantic and Great Lakes’ birds. 
“Downstream” was a beautiful and magnificent new film by Charles 
ind Elizabeth Schwartz of Missouri rivers and the life cycle of the small 
nouth bass. “Forever Yours—The Current River,” story of canoeing on 
his preserved fast water Ozark stream, was shown by Leonard Hall. 
‘Everglades—River of Grass,” by Hermes, was the banquet film. 
To add to the water theme, Sunday’s field trip to the Illinois Pere 
viarquette Park and beautiful Principia College was accompanied by rain 
alling on the greatest variety of foul-weather gear and migrating birds 
like. 
At the Federal level there was reassurance for the worried conserva- 
ionist: At least, the “View from the Interior” by Under-Secretary of the 
nterior Russell Train who stated that crimes against the environment were 
reater than crimes against society and that Secretary Hickel had determined 
hat there would be absolute liability for pollution accidents, seemed so. 
frain favors a Department of Natural Resources to avoid single-interest 
reatment of the environment. Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington, 
hairman of the committee on interior and insular affairs, favored a bill 
tating “National Environmental Policy” that would coordinate other 
ederal departments. He denounced as myth the “superabundance of re- 
ources” and the “infallibility of science.” At the state level, Carl R. Noren 
howed us the perfect example of a non-political, professional supervisor 
n his capacity as director of the Missouri Conservation Department. 
Urban ecology was demonstrated to teachers in New York City, to stu- 
ients in Ann Arbor, and to us at the convention by Miss Lindly in a panel 
m education of the new potential voters, three fourths of whom will 
e urban. 
Science with a conscience was exemplified by Dr. Barry Commoner, 
lirector of Biological Sciences, Washington University, and author of 
Science and Survival.’ He paralleled nature’s chimney swift and science’s 
et plane, the hawk and the missile, the robins’ songs and electronic notes, 
nd he showed that science was rapidly destroying the biological capital 
if soil, water and air. “Technology is intrinsically wrong—we should not 
ontrol, but live in nature. The high output of nitrates of successful sewage- 
reatment plants pollutes streams with algae as does the ‘successful’ use of 
