James Cowan Greenway

James Cowan Greenway (born April 7, 1903 in New York City , † June 10, 1989 in Greenwich , Connecticut ) was an American ornithologist . His studies of extinct and endangered bird species serve as the basis for many later works in the field of bird protection .

Live and act

Greenway was born in New York City to a wealthy medical doctor and grew up in the family seat in Greenwich , Connecticut . He was trained at Phillips Exeter Academy , where he graduated in 1922. In 1926 he graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts. He then worked for several years as a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper .

From April to August 1929 Greenway took part in the Franco-English-American zoological expedition to Madagascar . The expedition was carried out on behalf of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, the Natural History Museum in London and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City and led by the French ornithologist Jean Théodore Delacour . Then Greenway accompanied Delacour on his fifth expedition to Indochina , where they brought together zoological collections in Tonkin and Annam .

In 1932 Greenway was employed at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University , where he initially worked as assistant curator and as the successor to James Lee Peters from 1952 to 1960 as curator of the bird department. During the 1930s he took part in several expeditions to the Caribbean, particularly the Bahamas . In 1936 Greenway made a north-south flight over the Bahamas with one of his brothers, and they were the first pilots to land on East Caicos in the Turks and Caicos Islands by plane. From 1938 to 1939 Greenway participated in the seventh Delacour expedition to Indochina.

During World War II, Greenway served in the United States Navy. During his officer career, which began in 1941, he became a lieutenant in 1943 and later went to the south-west Pacific, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia as a lieutenant captain on aircraft carriers .

After the war he continued his work for the MCZ. In 1958 Greenway published his work Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World . This survey of recently extinct and endangered bird species provided the inspiration for numerous further works in the field of international bird protection in the following decades. Greenway was also involved in the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection and the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP), the predecessor organization of BirdLife International .

In 1960 Greenway left the MCZ for personal reasons. Back on his estate in Greenwich, he carried out his later ornithological work in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History. From 1960 to 1971 Greenway worked as the museum's trustee. From 1962 until his death in 1989 he was a research assistant in the ornithological department. Greenway made a list of all bird types in the museum, a huge project that was not yet completed at the time of his death. In 1978, at the age of 75, he was on a collective expedition to New Caledonia.

Greenway was married to Mary Frances Oakes, who died around the same time as he.

Publications

Although Greenway wrote numerous scientific papers, the work Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World is inextricably linked with his name. In 1967 it appeared in a second, slightly revised edition. For years, Greenway has been collecting data on extinct and endangered birds. The first draft of the book was completed in 1954, but it took another four years before the final version of Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World was published by New York book publisher Dover Publications. Along with Francis Harper's Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Old World and Glover Morrill Allen's Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere , Greenway's book was one of three publications by the American Committee for International Wildlife Protection that are considered the forerunners of the IUCN Red List. Besides Greenway (often in collaboration with described Ludlow Griscom , Ernst Mayr and Jean Delacour) subspecies of dwarf short wing , the Austral spur Piepers , the silver stud sun bird , the spot neck Buschtimalie , the Einfarbpitohui which Krick Rail , the Horsfieldlerche , the Schwarzkehlarassaris , the Green-tailed nectar bird , the Edwardsgimpel and the nominate form of the striped cheek alcippe . In 1967 he created the new bird family, the tree creepers .

Dedication names

Jean Théodore Delacour (1890–1985) and Pierre Charles Edmond Jabouille (1875–1847) named Trochalopteron formosum greenwayi in 1930, a subspecies of the glory in honor of Greenway. The subspecies Cercotrichas quadrivirgata greenwayi of the strip-headed hedge warbler , which Reginald Ernest Moreau (1897-1970) described in 1938, is dedicated to the South African botanist Percy James Greenway (1897-1980).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Vuilleumier, François (1992). " In Memoriam: James C. Greenway, Jr, 1903-1989 (PDF; 325 kB)". The Auk 109: p. 377-380.
2. ^ Sidney Dillon Ripley: Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World . In: The Auk . tape 75 , no. 4 , 1958, pp. 480–482 (English, online [PDF; 328 kB ; accessed on April 4, 2016]).
3. ^ Greenway, James C. Jr .: Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World , 2nd Edition, Dover Publications, New York 1967, ISBN 0-486-21869-4 .
4. ^ Extinct and vanishing birds of the world . Getcited. Archived from the original on March 18, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 23, 2011. 
5. ↑ Mark Burrow: Nature's ghosts: confronting extinction from the age of Jefferson to the age of ecology 2009, ISBN 0-226-03814-9 , pp. 165-167 (accessed June 7, 2011).
6. ^ Richard Sidney Richmond Fitter, Maisie Fitter: The Road to extinction November 1984, ISBN 2-88032-929-9 , p. 1 (accessed June 7, 2011).
7. ^ MP Adams, JH Cooper & N. J. Collar: Extinct and endangered ('E&E') birds: a proposed list for collection catalogs (PDF; 124 kB) 2003. Archived from the original on July 22, 2011. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 7, 2011. 
8. ^ Jean Théodore Delacour, Pierre Charles Edmond Jabouille: Description de trente oiseaux de l'Indochine française . In: L'Oiseau et la revue française d'ornithologie . tape 11 , 1930, ISSN  0030-1531 , p. 393-408 . Description p. 398.
9. ^ Reginald Ernest Moreau: Mr. RE Moreau sent the following description of a new subspecies . In: Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club . tape 58 , no. 4 , 1938, pp. 64–65 (English, online [accessed April 4, 2016]).