Thomas Gilbert Pearson

In 1918 and 1920, T. Gilbert Pearson, the co-founder and executive head of the National Association of Audubon Societies (now, the National Audubon Society), visited Green Island in the Laguna Madre. He was able to confirm that this remote island held a rookery of reddish egrets that had survived the plume-hunting of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This discovery, verified by J.R. Pemberton in 1921, led to Audubon’s 1923 lease of the Island from the State of Texas, and the hiring of wardens to protect the bird colonies.