In Memoriam
Shirley Ann Briggs
1918-2004
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Briggs was a colleague, dear friend, and staunch advocate of Rachel Carson all her
life.
Briggs was a wildlife artist, born in Iowa, one of the last students of the primitivist
painter, Grant Woods. She worked at the US Fish and Wildlife for many years and
was a founding member of the Audubon Naturalist Society which was an independent
naturalist organization. A brilliant naturalist herself, an ornithologist and a
lover of all things in nature, Briggs became the Executive Director of the Rachel
Carson Council in Maryland after Carson's death in 1963 -- an organization created
to carry on the legacy and work of Rachel Carson. She was the author/editor of The
Basic Guide to Pesticides, 1992) which fulfilled Carson's hopes of having a grass-roots
organization which could respond to the public's need for knowledge about the use
and misuse of pesticides. A prolific author on birds and wildlife of all sorts,
Briggs was also the artist who designed and painted the original diaorama's for
the wildlife exhibit in the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. Briggs died on
November 11th at age 86. A memorial service is planned in Bethesda, Md. She will
be buried in Ames, Iowa in the family plot.
