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Audubon and the Westerwood area have
had a relationship for over 100 years. The early connection involved
T. Gilbert Pearson, a Guilford College graduate and professor at the
State Normal and Industrial School, now UNCG. Pearson had a great
love of and fascination with birds, and was concerned by the
widespread slaughter of herons and egrets for their plumage. And so
on March 11, 1902 he gathered about 150 people in what is now Foust
Building at UNCG to form the Audubon Society of North Carolina. One
of his early efforts was to facilitate passage of the Audubon Act in
the 1903 NC Legislature. This law set up our state’s first game
warden system, staffed by over 100 Audubon wardens by 1909. Pearson
married Elsie Weatherly, a State Normal student from Greensboro, and
they lived on W. Market St. on the south edge of what would become
Westerwood. In 1905 Pearson was called to New York to help form the
National Audubon Society. He was its second president, serving over
20 years, and during that time helped pass the National Migratory
Bird Treaty Act, one of our most important environmental laws. He
and Elsie returned to Greensboro whenever they could, and are buried
in the Green Hill Cemetery just a few blocks from Westerwood’s
eastern edge.
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| Tributary of North Buffalo Creek in Lake Daniel Park after 1985 straightening and dredging |
More recent connections between Audubon and Westerwood involve the
T. Gilbert Pearson Audubon Society (TGPAS), a chapter of National
Audubon named in honor of Pearson. Westerwood resident Ben Matkins
was an early TGPAS president, and the chapter sponsored a memorial
bench in Ben’s honor beside N. Buffalo Creek at the foot of Woodlawn
St. after Ben’s untimely death several years ago. In the early 1990s
the TGPAS began a 10-year project called StreamGreen in which a
pilot project to create a vegetated stream buffer was begun along N.
Buffalo Creek in Lake Daniel Park. This project eventually involved
the Westerwood Neighborhood Association (WNA) and resulted in the
wooded streambanks we have today and ultimately a Greensboro policy
of providing such buffers on all public streams. The Adopt-A-Stream
program in the city was a creation of StreamGreen and it too was
eventually “adopted” by Greensboro Parks and Recreation. The
fruitful relationship between TGPAS and the city’s Stormwater
Division has resulted in over 1000 trees planted along the creeks in
Lake Daniel Park in cooperation with the WNA.
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| Tributary of North Buffalo Creek in Lake Daniel Park in 2009 years after the StreamGreen Project |
A wonderful result of the stream buffer is a proliferation of
birdlife along the streams in the park. A few years ago the TGPAS
placed a dozen bluebird boxes along the edge of the stream buffer.
Audubon members, including a couple from Westerwood, check these
boxes weekly from May through August to monitor nesting progress.
The summer of 2008 was a good one for baby birds in the park, with
43 bluebirds and 10 house wrens fledged and off on their own.
One last Audubon-Westerwood project is the display case next to the
tennis courts. The TGPAS paid for and arranged for city installation
of the case several years ago to allow the WNA a means to publicize
neighborhood issues and events and for Audubon to tell the story of
the restoration of N. Buffalo Creek in the park.
All of these connections seemed to call for a joint Audubon-Westerwood
program to share our history and to talk about future possibilities.
This will happen on THURSDAY APRIL 30, AT FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH
CHAPEL at 7:00 pm. We’ll have a short presentation on T. Gilbert
Pearson; see slides of the before and after vegetation along N.
Buffalo Creek; talk about our bluebird trail and its success; and
explore possibilities for future joint projects. So please come out
for this fun and interesting evening. THURSDAY APRIL 30, 7:00 pm.
Photo Credits: Top:
Jack Jezorek, North Buffalo Creek Tributary
1985, Bottom: Craig Lawrence, North
Buffalo Tributary 2009
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