The Story of How Mass Audubon Became the Nexus for Nature Travel

A Small Team Set the Standard for Eco-Adventures

Mass Audubon Travel and Tours group in Kenya in 1980

Jacquie Manley Colman of Acton, MA remembers a moment 50 years ago when she had just returned from Venezuela on her first international birding trip.

At that time, Venezuela was not only safe for Americans, it was an emerging birding destination. Manley was working for the pioneering Mass Audubon Travel and Tours program. Her colleagues, Peter Alden and Chris Leahy, would design and scout the trips, and her job was to coordinate arrangements with the field partners and communicate with their tour participants.

“Peter, did you say your next trip will be to Colombia?” is how she recalls her reaction to learning about the next destination they were planning. “Isn’t Colombia a little dangerous for travel?”, knowing drug cartels were rampant.

Jacquie Manley Colman handled operations in the early 1970s. Note the Smith-Corona typewriter on her desk.

Going to underdeveloped countries on a tour to see birds and mammals in the wild was just beginning to happen, even if it was a little risky. Eco-travel was in its infancy. Her small team that operated out of the Lincoln, Mass headquarters were at the forefront of eco-adventures, often the 1^st to do group travel. In his upcoming memoir, My Wild Life, Peter Alden recounts this period:

These off-the-beaten path destinations would become foundational programs for Mass Audubon. We were often the first U.S.-based educational tours to focus on wildlife observation, ecosystems, and conservation issues abroad. By the 1980s, Mass Audubon would develop a strong reputation as a leader in conservation-based travel, with its programs often serving as models for other nature and nonprofit organizations. The Mass Audubon travel program helped train and inspire generations of citizen scientists and birders, many of whom continued supporting international conservation causes.

Mass Audubon’s program grew rapidly in the 1970s and 80s. A small team led the effort, which included Alden, Leahy, Manley, Richard Forster, John Kricher, David Clapp, and Jim Lane. “We plotted itineraries with our Vice-President Jim Baird, while Jacquie handled the operations. The trips were built around naturalist-led experiences, emphasizing bird watching, ecology, and cultural sensitivity. “

Setting a Standard

Mass Audubon’s reputation as a leader in conservation-based travel would serve as a model for other nature and nonprofit organizations. Soon natural history museums and college alumni programs would offer programs as a way of building loyalty with their communities and furthering their missions.

“We were happy to support this movement. I remember advising an eager graduate student at Harvard, Victor Emanuel, about how to organize trips to support his lifelong passion for birds. He soon started his company, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT), now widely considered to be one of the most respected and established birding and nature tour companies globally.”

Why would a state-focused conservation organization have a travel program? “I think it enhanced the mission of Mass Audubon. People held the department -- Jim Baird and Peter and Chris -- with high acclaim. They looked forward to what they had planned for the next year.”

The programs were a way to bring the Mass Audubon community together to learn about the natural world and embrace the protection of wildlife and their habitats. The trips supported local conservation work, as well as providing important funding for conservation programs at Mass Audubon.

Manley Colman passed the baton to Karen O’Neill who commanded the program for over 25 years before it was retired in 2019. At its peak, Mass Audubon Travel and Tours operated over 25 trips per year covering all 7 continents.

From the "Wayback Machine" - Travel & Tours website in 1990s offered 7 continents of travel.

Through the work of Mass Audubon and other early pioneering organizations, birding and wildlife tours emerged as a major force to support conservation. Case studies examined how ecotourism could be used as a tool for sustainable development, particularly in biodiversity-rich but economically poor regions. Even the United Nations embraced the movement, declaring 2002 the International Year of Ecotourism. Martha Honey, a journalist turned policy expert, played a key role in analyzing and promoting ecotourism as a serious development and conservation strategy. Her influential book Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? presented the real-world impact of ecotourism on such countries as Costa Rica, Kenya, Ecuador and the Galápagos, and Botswana. It was exciting to see what had begun in the 1960s as a niche travel idea emerge into a major force for protecting our fragile ecosystems. 

In his memoir, Peter Alden shared how it all started over a lunch with Jim Baird, Mass Audubon’s president, who hired Alden to greatly expand the travel program beyond the two trips to North American they were doing.

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Peter Alden's memoir, My Wild Life, will be available this holiday season.