- published: 29 Dec 2013
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The National Audubon Society (Audubon) is an American, non-profit, environmental organization dedicated to conservation. Incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and uses science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission. It is named in honor of John James Audubon, a Franco-American ornithologist and naturalist who painted, cataloged, and described the birds of North America in his famous book Birds of America published in sections between 1827 and 1838.
The society has nearly 500 local chapters, each of which is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization voluntarily affiliated with the National Audubon Society, which often organize birdwatching field trips and conservation-related activities. It also coordinates the Christmas Bird Count held each December in the U.S., a model of citizen science, in partnership with Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Great Backyard Bird Count each February. Together with Cornell, Audubon created eBird, an online database for bird observation. The National Audubon Society also has many global partners to help birds that migrate beyond our borders, including BirdLife International based in England, Bird Studies Canada, and many partners in Latin America and the Caribbean. Audubon's International Alliances Program (IAP) brings together people throughout the Western Hemisphere to work together to implement conservation solutions at Important Birds Areas (IBA's).
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in subgroups.
Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.
A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.