Arthur A Allen Co.

The company was founded by Doc Allen’s youngest daughter Prudence, his grandson Chris, and his great-granddaughter Maggie to perpetuate Doc Doc’s legacy in preserving wildlife and its habitat.  Doc Doc, as his grandkids affectionately called him, was one of America’s earliest social entrepreneurs.  Among his noteworthy accomplishments he founded the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in 1915 and the National Wildlife Society in 1935.  He traveled the globe researching and photographing birds and then wrote books and delivered speeches explaining their unique habits and behaviors.  He solved the 200 year old mystery of breeding Ruffed Grouse in captivity in his side yard in Ithaca, NY.  He developed and taught the first college course on conservation of wildlife.  He received the world’s first PhD in ornithology from Cornell where he then taught and researched birds the rest of his life.   He and his wife Elsa Guerdrum Allen (also a Cornell PhD recipient) had 5 children and were a constant source of energy to each other and any true lovers of Nature.

 

Doc Allen led a research expedition to Louisiana to find and photograph one of the last known pairs of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers.  Now either extinct or nearly so, its species was severely impacted by the heavy logging of the Southeast’s old forests.  An avid wing shooter, he assisted in the development of hunting licenses and the promotion of game seasons to protect gamebirds from hunting during their breeding seasons.

His impact on conservation and land stewardship is part of our company’s DNA and why our mission is to preserve what matters most.