Political Cartoonist Was a Darling of the Ecology Movement

High atop a 20-foot tower, Doug Mackey alerted the dozen visitors: “Look at the Roseate spoonbills coming right at us,” he said, identifying two large, pink wading birds with huge spoon-shaped bills flying toward the observation platform.

Their flashy pass was just a part of the spectacular display of nature that Mackey, 38, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife public-use manager, shares with guests at this refuge.

From their perch on the tower, the visitors overlooked tidal bays and tiny islands covered with dense forests of red mangrove trees tangled in a mass of above-water- and ground-roots.

They saw spoonbills with shafts of sunlight shimmering through their wings.

They viewed endangered, prehistoric-like wood storks; laughing gulls, whose calls sound like human laughter; blue-wing teals; glossy black water turkeys (anhingas); double-crested cormorants; golden-slippered snowy egrets; white ibis; spindly legged sandpipers; yellow-billed great white egrets; blue herons, and numerous other bird species standing in the shallows feeding on fish or just flying by.

The powder-blue sky and sparkling azure waters at this 5,014-acre wildlife sanctuary on Sanibel Island, off the Southwestern shores of Florida, are alive with thousands of birds.

On a recent day, young pelicans bravely plunged their pouchy bills 20 to 30 times into the tidal bays before catching a fish; nearby, adult pelicans succeeded at the same task on their first tries.

Donald Reed, 40, a watercolor wildlife artist from Oregon, Ill., sat on a bank and etched nature’s fascinating show.

“I come here every couple of years to research birds in the wild,” Reed said. “This is the best place I know of for huge numbers of birds, for constantly changing varieties of birds. Half to three-quarters of all species of birds in America pass through here at some point during the year.”

And more than 800,000 people from all over the country come here each year, too.

This, the most popular of more than 450 national wildlife refuges in America, is named after Jay Norwood (Ding) Darling, a newspaper political cartoonist.

Darling, who lived from 1876 to 1962, was a giant in the cause of conservation. Through his nationally syndicated cartoons, he alerted the nation to the urgent needs of preventing the extinction of wildlife and preserving precious natural resources decades before such causes became fashionable.

As father of the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Act, Darling launched the program to establish a nationwide system of wildlife refuges, to rescue and set aside lands as migratory bird sanctuaries.

He is known as the best friend ducks ever had.

Ding Darling (his nickname was a contraction of his last name) was born in Norwood, Mich., and grew up in Iowa.

He went to work as a reporter-cartoonist for the Sioux City Journal in 1900. In 1906, he was hired as the Des Moines Register’s political cartoonist. By 1949, when he retired from the Register, he had drawn more than 15,000 daily cartoons.

“I watched the prairie chicken disappear, watched the flight of migratory water fowl dwindle from huge cloud-like formations to sporadic flights of remnants. It was the disappearance of all that wonderful wildlife I knew as a kid that got me started early on as a conservationist,” he would recall in his later years.

He championed the cause of conservation from his first days as a cartoonist.

He never let up for 50 years, interspersing cartoons about saving the nation’s natural resources with those on contemporary political matters.

He did a whole series of before-and-after cartoons showing how man has ravaged nature in his efforts to advance civilization.

The preservation of migratory waterfowl, he insisted, goes with “the management of water resources and the critical effect such management has upon human sustenance. Wild ducks, geese and shore birds are the delicate indicators of the prognosis for human existence, just as sure as God made little green apples.”

Darling’s cartoons appeared in 130 of America’s leading newspapers. A 1934 poll of newspapers by Editor and Publisher Magazine named him the outstanding cartoonist in the country.

In 1924, he was awarded the second Pulitzer Prize given a cartoonist. He won that prestigious prize again in 1942.

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Darling chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey, forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a position he held for two years during a hiatus from his drawing board.

It was the depths of the Great Depression, but Darling was able to pry $20 million in federal appropriations for wildlife conservation from Congress.

In 1934, Darling designed the first duck stamp, which showed two mallards about to descend to the water. Ever since, any duck hunter must have in possession a current duck stamp. A new stamp is issued each year. The first stamp cost $1. Now they sell for $7.50. Proceeds from the stamps are earmarked for refuges.

Jeannette Rudy, of Nashville, recently purchased from another collector the first duck stamp ever issued. Darling had signed his name across the stamp. The price was an undisclosed six-figure amount. Rudy had the stamp insured for $300,000.

Since the duck stamp program began 56 years ago, more than $350 million has been raised to buy and preserve more than 4 million wetland acres. Many of the more than 450 national wildlife refuges have been paid for either entirely or in part by duck stamp revenue.

Darling was the founder and first president of the National Wildlife Federation. A lake in Iowa, a lake in Canada, a species of flowering crab tree and several conservation club chapters across America have been named after him. He won the prestigious Audubon medal and many other national honors.

Sigma Delta Chi (now the Society of Professional Journalists) designated the Des Moines Register Building as a historic site because that is where Darling worked as a cartoonist.

Here at the J. N. (Ding) Darling National Wildlife Refuge’s visitor center, several of the cartoonists works are on display.

David Lendt’s award-winning biography “Ding--The Life of Jay Norwood Darling” and the J. N. (Ding) Darling Foundation’s book, which reproduces his wildlife cartoons, are for sale in the refuge gift shop.

Darling’s studio is re-created in the visitor center as it existed when he left it for the final time. It is also how it appeared in his last cartoon, “ ‘Bye Now--It’s Been Wonderful Knowing You,” which ran on the Register’s front page the morning after he died, Feb. 12, 1962.

His last cartoon showed the artist running out the studio door, hat in hand.

The studio replica includes his swivel chair, easel with final cartoon, brushes, half-filled coffee cup with spoon, the original duck stamp and several of his most famous cartoons on the walls.

It’s appropriate that the wildlife refuge that carries Darling’s name is here in Florida, his winter home for many years.

And it’s especially noteworthy that a newspaper cartoonist has had such a lasting effect on the protection and preservation of wildlife in America.