Research Outline

Individual Waterfowl Conservation Contributors

Goals

The goal is to compile a list of individuals who donate/contribute to supporting wetlands and waterfowl. After the list is built, further information needs to be provided as a basic profile of each potential donor.

Early Findings

Our research appeared to be fruitless, and an additional half-hour of research was given to eventually yield a membership list of donors to the Audubon Nature Institue. This provides us with a better and clear research path to narrow down the requested information.

RESEARCH PATH

To begin, we sought out websites specific to waterfowl conservation in hopes of finding conservation or donation pages that would provide us with a list of the top contributors. Initially, the Waterbird Society looked promising and in the end did not include any actual donor names. Failing this approach, we expanded to wetlands, and then to bird conservation in general. In the end, this path proved futile and we had to readjust our course.

The next path involved searching out specific conservation agencies and looking for lists of donors to them. We again attempted Audubon's website looking for a potential list of donors but did not prove successful. We included in our search Wildlife.org and Duck's Unlimited and, in a rather desperate attempt, waterfowl hunting websites in the hopes of finding those who are interested in preserving the habitat of waterfowl.

We also tried to locate specific state and smaller chapters of conservation agencies. Included in this research strategy were governmental agencies and programs that support waterfowl and wetland conservation. The thought here is that if we could isolate some names of advocates, then we could potentially link them to donations to other agencies. This research path, while intensive, did not yield the desired results.

Donor / Patron List Unearthed

  • Not wanting to give up on this research, we attempted one final push for the desired information. At last, we were able to locate a list of patrons and contributors to the Audubon Nature Institute through their 2018 annual report. We did not have the time to review the entire list to see if waterfowl or bird conservationists were included/broken out in the donor list.

Resources