Tougher Audubon Society Watching More Than Birds

Question: What’s the connection between a back-yard birdhouse and a $24-million, environmentally advanced office building in Manhattan?

Answer: The National Audubon Society.

The organization, long known as a protector of birds and wildlife habitat, is moving into a new headquarters this month--a building that president Peter A. A. Berle calls a model for environmental activism.

“Today we can’t protect birds by building bird feeders and acquiring sanctuaries alone,” he says. “They are threatened by larger-scale dilemmas related to the way we use land and resources on a global basis.”

The building, a restored brownstone on lower Broadway, is designed to slash consumption of energy.

Among its features: Gas-powered heating and cooling system instead of electric; toxic-free insulation and building materials; double-paned windows; extensive use of natural lighting, and sensors that automatically shut off lighting when not needed.

There will also be deskside wastebaskets and recycling chutes for glass, plastic and paper. Audubon expects to recycle 80% of its waste, right down to composting for a rooftop garden.

Already, the headquarters is getting worldwide attention as an ecological showcase.

“It’s a great model that fits right in line with our goals: the smart use of resources,” says Kirk Gastinger of the American Institute of Architects’ national committee on the environment.

Says Berle, 54, a former New York state assemblyman who headed the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation in the 1970s: “We like to say we’re taking a 19th-Century building and putting it into the 21st Century.”

And this is just the beginning, he says. The society plans to make missionaries of its nearly 600,000 members, arming them with “how-to” videos, slide shows and brochures to convert architects, engineers and planning executives to “think environmental.”

The society, Berle emphasizes, still considers its primary mission to protect wildlife through its extensive programs of sanctuaries, Birdathons, scientific research, ecological camps and television specials. But these activities will be enhanced by the headquarters, an eight-story Romanesque building, which will house Audubon’s staff of about 150.

Architectural restoration had not been on Berle’s agenda when he came to the Audubon Society from the environmental law firm he had founded in 1971.

When he took over Audubon in 1985, the organization was teetering on the brink of insolvency. By tightening financial controls and focusing on fund raising, he and his staff increased annual revenues from $25 million to $42 million over six years.

Berle also brought to Audubon a respect for the society’s activist roots--early Audubon members became the country’s first game wardens and lobbied to stop manufacturers from using plumage to decorate hats.

“I’ve always spent a fair amount of time outside,” says Berle, a Harvard Law graduate, whose resume combines an activism career with the reputation of a rugged outdoorsman.

“We had a family farm in Massachusetts when I was growing up and I’ve put up a lot of hay. And I’m a great backpacker and fly fisherman.” He and his wife, Lila, who have four grown children, still divide their time between Manhattan and the Berkshires farm.

But he was also aware that it was time to update the bird-watching image.

“It’s been a good marriage,” says Glenn Olson of Sacramento, vice president of the western region, which includes California’s 70,000 Audubon members. “Peter’s an iron man sort of guy. His idea of getting involved in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was to hike the Northern Alaska coastal plane the oil companies wanted to drill. It’s 80 very, very tough miles of marshy bogs and mosquitoes.

“He’s learned to stop and smell the flowers--and see the birds,” Olson says. “And at the same time he is shaking us up.”

During his first year as president, Berle took on the Marine Corps, when a South Carolina Audubon member complained that Marines at Parris Island were marching to a song that began:

I saw a bird with a yellow bill

Sitting on my window sill

I coaxed him in with a piece of bread

And then I crushed his little head.

Berle’s letter of complaint stated that his own military experience as an Air Force intelligence officer in Vietnam had taught him that advocating “unsportsmanlike hunting techniques” was not necessary to instill pride or toughness in troops. His protest was successful; the chant was banned.

Not all of Berle’s reforms have sailed through so smoothly. The 87-year-old Audubon Society is the nation’s second-oldest major environmental organization (after the Sierra Club at 100) and traditions are cherished.

The new president was criticized, particularly in the media, for streamlining the format of the revered Audubon Magazine, long known for its lavish photography and weighty stories. But he maintains that it was time for a change. “The magazine was highly regarded but not widely read, and our mission is to have an effect on public policy.”

But he went too far in trying to update the society’s bird-watching image by replacing the familiar logo of an airborne egret with an abstract blue flag. “We took a lot of grief when we went through that exercise,” he recalls. “Our members felt very strongly about that egret. We hauled down the flag and fed it to the egret.”

Still, his constituency has backed him on the big move to spend $24 million on a showcase building--10,000 individual members have donated nearly $1.25 million.

Ironically, the decision to build an environmental model, he says, was almost an afterthought. Economics were the major consideration when the Audubon lease came up for renewal. The rent was high and the building at 57th Street and 3rd Avenue was not comfortable, says Berle.

“It’s the classic New York glass box with little tiny cubbyholes, windows that don’t open and awful air quality. We decided to buy an old shell and redo it. Basically we envisioned an open plan with lots of light and fresh air.”

They found the Schermerhorn Building, a century-old brownstone-and-brick architectural treasure that had declined from a fashionable department store to a wreck of a sweatshop.

“Once we found the thing,” says Berle, “it became clear we had not just an opportunity but an obligation to become a model.” They promoted the ambitious project to their membership on a bottom-line basis: the systems are expected to pay for themselves in three to five years.

Berle enlisted architect Randolph Croxton, who’d warmed up on enviro-renovation in 1989 by remodeling the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) four-story loft offices. The NRDC had wanted to get beyond the notion that environmentalism means a Spartan workplace with gloomy offices where people shiver in sweaters in winter because the heating and lighting are skimpy.

Says Croxton: “We learned to create a space in which workers do not get sick, the company saves money and the resources of the Earth are utilized in a more thoughtful manner.”

Although his firm specializes in clients who want healthy buildings, the environmental groups have pushed the envelope, says Croxton. “It was like running into a buzz saw. We normally are pulling clients along trying to make the case for higher quality systems and more energy-efficient systems and so forth. But with NRDC and then Audubon, we definitely encountered clients ahead of us. They were pulling us, and expanding the dimensions in every criteria.”

As Peter Berle darts around the country, looking at bird sanctuaries in Maine, touring prairie preserves in Kansas and generally exhorting his troops, he is spreading the word that anybody can do it.

“This building will only be of value if it functions as a model,” he emphasizes. “Every decision on design, purchasing and engineering was measured against these criteria: Does the product make environmental sense? Is it the most cost-effective? And is it readily available on the market?”

As a delegate to this summer’s United Nations Environmental Conference in Brazil, he was disappointed, he says, that both the Japanese and the European Community seemed ahead of the United States in understanding the long-term benefits of development that doesn’t deplete natural resources.

But he is optimistic. With a formal dedication ceremony of Audubon’s new building planned for December, he hopes to see their “how-to” videos and technical brochures studied in corporate boardrooms around the country.

“We have an opportunity for real mid-course correction,” he says. “I think it’s possible.”