What’s On September – The New Forest Commemorative Walk
Our volunteers at the Heritage Centre often come up with interesting finds as they work through our reference library collection. This week an amazing story involving Theodore Roosevelt, President of the USA from 1892-1916, came to light.
We have booklets written in 1960 and 2010 which celebrate Roosevelt’s visit to the New Forest in 1910. On his way to a visit to Africa and Europe he included in his itinerary a trip to the Forest. He asked the British Embassy in Washington to arrange for an expert on British birds to accompany him and his wife to identify bird song on a walk through the British countryside.
Sir Edward Grey who was the Foreign Secretary at that time, and a keen ornithologist was happy to agree to accompany them and arranged a route through the Itchen Valley and New Forest. In June 1910 they arrived in Hampshire and walked from Titchbourne to Kings Worthy and en route Roosevelt recorded that the birdsong of our humble blackbird was particularly impressive. They were then driven from there to Stoney Cross where they walked another seven miles until they reached Brockenhurst where they stayed for the night. As night was falling they heard the Nightjar which, although looking like the American Whip-poor-will, sounded very different which came as quite a surprise to the President.
They stayed the night at the Forest Park Hotel where Grey gave him a list of the 41 species they had seen and also the 22 they had heard on their walk.
So impressed with what they had seen they continued to communicate after the visit and this led to an important conservation development in the USA. The Migratory Bird Treaty was signed between the British and US governments in 1916 which was then passed by an Act of Congress (MBTA) in 1918. This act has ensured the protection of migratory birds in the USA from that time onwards.
In May 1921 Lord Grey re-enacted the walk and then in 1984 as part of National Heritage Year the Hampshire Ornithological Society walked a six mile walk along the route from Titchbourne to Easton. To mark the centenary of the walk it was again undertaken on 9th June 2010, a fitting mark of respect for the two men who did such a great deal for conservation at the beginning of the 20th century.
The booklets in the Christopher Tower Reference Library at the New Forest Heritage Centre are: The New Forest Commemorative Walk published by the Nature Conservancy in 1960; Grey-Roosevelt Walk Centenary 2010 published by the Hampshire Ornithological Society and And What is so rare as a day in June? By D R Banting published by the author in 2010.
