The Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States (Audubon Naturalist Society) (ANS) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation and education. Until 1959, the organization was known as the Audubon Society of the District of Columbia. The organization holds three properties in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as wildlife sanctuaries, two in Virginia along with its headquarters in Maryland. In October 2022. membership voted to change the name of the organization to Nature Forward. History The first Audubon Society of the District of Columbia was organized in 1897 by Mrs. John Dewhurst Patten "for the protection and study of birds". It was one of many local groups organized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as part of the Audubon movement. Its first president was George M. Sternberg; the Executive Committee of fifteen members included Florence Augusta Merriam, Leland Ossian Howard, and Theodore Sherman Palmer. Robert Ridgway was named one of several honorary vice presidents, and designed a pin for the society. Olive Thorne Miller wrote one of the group's earliest leaflets. In the Society's first year, it printed and circulated a leaflet published by its counterpart organization in New York. Early goals of the organization were to educate children about the value of birds and to curtail the use of bird feathers in millinery. Frank M. Chapman gave the inaugural lecture, "Woman as Bird Enemy", addressing the fashion for trimming hat with feathers. However, most of the active members of the early Society were women. Theodore Roosevelt was an active member of the Society; during his presidency the organization occasionally met at the White House. Sternberg was succeeded as president of the organization by Judge Barnard of the Supreme Court of the District; following Barnard's death in 1923, Palmer served as president. In the years following World War II, Irston Barnes (president 1946–1962), Roger Tory Peterson, and Louis Halle rejuvenated the organization and strengthened its voice on regional conservation issues. The Society was incorporated in 1947, and new by-laws replaced the Executive Committee with an annually elected Board of Directors. Board members during this period included Paul Bartsch, William Vogt, and in the 1950s, Howard Zahniser. Rachel Carson served on the board from 1948 to 1950, and from 1955; she chaired the publications committee and wrote book reviews and other pieces for ANS's Wood Thrush (later, Atlantic Naturalist). In December 1959, the organization adopted its