This statement is based on the conviction that humankind is both a part of the ecological systems of the Earth and the steward of environmental health and vitality. It follows the purposes and objectives of the Society's constitution and bylaws, some of which are:

■ To educate the public on the need to protect wild birds and other animals, trees and other plants, soil, air and water, and to promote a better public understanding of the interdependence of these natural resources.

■ To study and conduct research essential to the formulation of sound policies in the field or conservation.

■ To foster recognition of the need for the preservation of such environmental conditions as ample food, water, and cover of good quality, on the maintenance of which animals and plants depend for survival.

■ To foster the preservation of adequate stocks of native animals and plants, so that no species may become threatened with extinction.

■ To promote the protection and preservation of natural resourced, including the encouragement, establishment, and maintenance of nature sanctuaries.

■ To foster the creation of nature centers and the establishment and maintenance thereon of facilities and programs which will bring about a better understanding by children and adults of the world of nature.

■ To further, by all means that are both wise and opportune, the objects included within or related to those above.

Over its seventy-five years, the Society, through the study of bird life, has become increasingly aware of the interconnectedness of all life, and of the major cumulative impact of humankind's activities on the health of life-support systems - the air, water, and land. This has led to extensive efforts to, minimize the impacts of such things as pollution, toxic chemicals, radiation, and ecologically unsound water and land projects. It has led to deep involvement in those areas which have an especially major environmental impact such as the  production and use of energy.

To carry out its work, the Society has developed a well-coordinated effort in three interdependent fields - research, education, action. The research provides a sound rational underpinning for the Society's efforts. The educational effort disseminates - through numerous national and chapter publications and meetings, nature centers, ecology camps, and the news media - the solidly grounded information essential to effective and sound action. The action programs demonstrate the effective use both of self-help and the democratic process in protecting our natural heritage and building a better future. They involve the Society's 400,000-plus members, its 430-plus chapters, its regional offices, and its Washington office, and make use of such tools as self-action, persuasion, litigation, and political action.

The program of the Society has gradually evolved over the years and stems from numerous inputs from regional conferences, national conventions, local chapters, regional offices, centers, and camps, and letters from members. What follows is the current expression of the goals of the Society – The Audubon Cause. With chapters having had a substantial initiating role, this document was developed with unanimous approval at a three-day conference of National Audubon Society's nation- wide staff, and has been reviewed and approved by the society's board of directors. Our goals are to:

Conserve wildlife and the life-support systems of the natural environment

■ Engage in and encourage the study and conservation of all wildlife, non-hunted as well as hunted, plants as well as animals.

■ Help establish and protect wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, parks, wild and scenic rivers, and ecological reserves. Defend the integrity of existing national wildlife refuges. national parks, wilderness areas, and national forests, and work for additions to these systems. Defend and protect the national interest in wildlife populations on federal public lands,

■ Promote the private and governmental funding needed for protecting wildlife and the integrity of natural systems.

■ Engage in and encourage the protection and restoration of threatened and endangered species, with special attention to the preservation of essential habitats.

■ Work for the inclusion of the distinct types of American prairies in the national park preservation system, and improved conservation of native grasslands on both private and public land.

■ Work for effective national and international measures for the conservation of marine mammals. seabirds, reptiles, ocean fisheries, and threatened marine ecosystems,

■ Educate the public about the value of predators, and insist on enlightened programs to deal with animal damage-control problems.

Promote rational strategies for energy development and use, stressing conservation and renewable energy sources

■ Push for private and public energy policies and practices that recognize the conservation of energy as being essential to economic vitality, environmental quality, and national security.

■ Recognize the regional and local aspects of energy problems, and encourage at all governmental levels those solutions that are responsive and appropriate to the 1ong-term needs of communities.

■ Call on our individual members, and commit our organization, to demonstrate by example sound energy principles and practices.

■ Promote the appropriate decentralization and diversification of our nation's energy production systems, including the decentralized use of solar and other renewable energy sources.

■ Push aggressively for government and private funding for, and the rapid development and use of, the various solar and other renewable life-supporting sources or energy.

■ Recognize the need for expanded use of coal under effective environmental controls.

■ Encourage technological efforts to find environmentally sound ways to use oil shale and tar sands, and to increase the recovery of crude oil and natural gas.

■ Make the nuclear fission period as brief and as limited as possible, and during that period push aggressively for improved safety, emergency planning, and nuclear waste disposal requirements in all parts of the nuclear fission cycle.

♦ Support a moratorium on the granting of additional construction permits for new nuclear power plants.

♦ Promote the establishment by Congress of a temporary independent entity to advise Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or its successor, on the need for and desirability of continuing with the development of nuclear power plants that now have construction permits but not operating licenses.

■ Support measures to protect air and water quality and ecological integrity, and to eliminate waste in development, transportation, and use or fossil fuels.

■ Insist on diligent concern for the environmental effects of technologies used in the generation, transmission, and consumption of electric power.

■ Support transportation policies at all levels of government that emphasize energy efficiency in the movement of goods and people, reducing reliance on cars and trucks.

■ Monitor the implementation of Stale and federal laws and support state and federal legislation to effect sound environmental controls over mining of fuels and reclamation of mine lands based on specific uniform federal standards.

Protect life from pollution, radiation, and toxic substances

■ Support the purposes, defend the integrity, and monitor the effectiveness of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Support full funding for, and sound enforcement of, these basic pollution-control laws.

■ Work for effective implementation and defend the integrity of the Toxic Substances Control Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Noise Control Act, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

■ Seek better pollution.contro1 programs, with active citizen participation, at the state and municipal level.

■ Encourage, as public policy, the recycling of all recoverable resources in the management of solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes. Work for Slate and national legislation to require mandatory deposits on beverage containers. Support the purposes of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

■ Advocate biological and integrated pest control measures while working to eliminate the use everywhere of persistent, highly mobile pesticides and other toxic substances that poison the food chains of natural ecosystem.

■ Support laws and programs to reduce radiation exposure to humans and other living things.

■ Work for the enactment and enforcement of federal and state legislation dealing with oil spills and hazardous chemical wastes

Further the wise use of land and water

■ Work for policies that encourage environmentally and economically sound land and water resource planning at the national, state and local level.

■ Encourage efforts to protect the coastal, estuarine, barrier islands, and outer continental shelf areas of the United States, including full implementation of the Coastal Zone Management Act.

■ Support the development of ecologically sound national policies for farmlands, forestlands, rangelands, and wetlands,

■ Strongly advocate the implementation of water conservation programs in the residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural sectors, Work to protect the 1ong-term public interests in maintaining the quantity and quality of groundwater.

■ Advocate ecologically sound floodplain, beach, and watershed management with emphasis on nonstructural approaches, and termination of government programs that subsidize development in flood-prone areas.

■ Promote environmentally sensitive development and rehabilitation in our cities, Work for the creation and preservation of environmental education centers, open space, and greenbelts in urban regions.

■ Support reforms in tax structures and other incentives for the preservation of productive agricultural and forestlands.

■ Promote the preservation, and restoration of natural aquatic ecosystems, including streams, lakes, and wetlands, and oppose environmentally unsound and/or uneconomic channelization, dredging, drainage, dam-building, diversion and navigation projects.

■ Encourage the establishment of procedures for an equitable sharing of the costs of construction and maintenance of highways, railways, airports, and public waterways.

Speak for the public interest in public lands and waters

■ Defend aggressively the national interest in the federal public lands and oppose transfer of these lands to the States, other political jurisdictions, or to private interests, except where such transfers are clearly in the public interest.

■ Press for establishment, adequate funding, and proper management in Alaska of national parks, monuments, preserves, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and wild and scenic rivers,

■ Seek reform of the outmoded General Mining Law of 1872.

■ Work for proper environmental controls over prospecting, mining, grazing, logging, off-road vehicles, and recreational activities on federal, state, county and other public lands.

■ Urge preservation of the integrity of natural stream flows where excessive diversions threaten aquatic and riparian eco-systems.

Promote awareness of and actions to solve global environmental problems

■ Support the purposes of the United Nations Environment Programme and urge full U.S funding participation.

 Promote and participate in international conventions for the protection of wildlife and the environment.

■ Work with other national and international organizations, both private and public, in cooperative efforts to protect and preserve wildlife and major ecosystems of global concern.

Work for stabilization of world population

■ Work with private and public agencies to develop rational strategies for the control of population growth

■ Emphasize the relationship between population pressures and environmental problems, and include population concerns in our education and legislative programs.