On July 14, the board of the Seattle chapter of the National Audubon Society, previously known as Seattle Audubon, announced its unanimous decision to drop the name “Audubon” from its organization’s name. Named for John James Audubon, a naturalist known for his illustrations of birds, the large Seattle chapter’s announcement read in part:

“The societies named for Audubon were formed after his death. He was known for his paintings and descriptions of U.S. bird species in his seminal work, ‘The Birds of America.’ Less known are Audubon’s history of buying and selling Black people as slaves, his contributions to white supremacist thought and policy, and opposition to abolition, as well as his appropriation of Black and Indigenous observations of bird species.”

Major news outlets including CNN and the Associated Press reported on the decision. We caught up with SIS professor Malini Ranganathan, a scholar who researches and teaches about environmental justice, to answer a few questions and help put this decision into perspective.