Ernest Harold Baynes (1868–1925) was an American naturalist and writer. He was instrumental in bringing to public attention the near demise of songbirds and of the bison. He founded the American Bison Society, of which President Teddy Roosevelt was honorary chairman. He was "the closest thing New England, and the world for that matter, will ever get to a real-life Doctor Dolittle; all sorts of New England birds and animals–foxes, wolves, chickadees, bears and bison were known to roam around and in and out of his house."[1]
He was born on 1 May 1868 at Calcutta, West Bengal in India, a son of John Baynes a British inventor, by his wife Helen Augusta Nowill Baynes In the 1870s, after his father had failed at running a textiles company in Calcutta, the family moved to New York, where John set up the Baynes Tracery and Mosaic Co., which produced etched memorial tablets, among other products. He patented manufacturing processes with the tastemaker Lockwood de Forest, and Baynes tablets survive at Grace Church in Newark, the Battell Chapel and Norfolk Library in Norfolk, Connecticut, and the Cleveland Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. John claimed (without proof) to have invented "photo-modeling", a technique for using light to carve sculpture.[2] Ernest's siblings included Lillian Baynes Griffin, a British-born American journalist and photographer, and John R. Baynes, a metal etcher and photographer.
He received his early education in England and aged 11 moved with his parents to Bronx Park, New York. He graduated as valedictorian of his high school class and subsequently attended the College of the City of New York.[1] In the 1890s he started publishing articles on nature and wildlife in various newspapers. "Without the constraints of scholarly publishing, he became a wildlife showman through his articles and appearances."[1]
In 1904 he was appointed conservator of the Corbin Park buffalo reserve on the edge of the Blue Mountain Forest in New Hampshire, by Austin Corbin Jr. (d.1938), whose father the banker and railroad entrepreneur Austin Corbin (1827-1896) had established it.[1] Known as the "Blue Mountain Forest Association", it was a limited membership proprietary hunting club, the park of which comprised 26000acres in the towns of Cornish, Croydon, Grantham, Newport and Plainfield. Corbin Sr. imported bison from Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, Manitoba and Texas and donated bison to other American zoos and preserves. He also imported exotic species from Europe and Canada, including wild boar from the Black Forest of Germany. Having been purchased by a syndicate of hunters in 1944, the park survives in 2020, surrounded by a 26adj=midNaNadj=mid chain-link fence, as a non-profit organization with a membership of about 30 wealthy game hunters,[3] and is referred to as the "millionaires hunt club", said to be "the most exclusive game preserve in the United States". The herd of bison, however, was destroyed in the 1940s following an outbreak of brucellosis, and the main species preserved and hunted are elk and boar.
From a natural level of 60 million in America, the bison population had been reduced by human activity to just 1,000 by the 1890s, and in 1904 160 of these animals lived within Corbin Park. In about 1906 Baynes conducted a survey into surviving numbers of American bison, and found that 2,039 existed, 325 in the wild (25 in the USA, 300 in Canada), and 1,714 in captivity (1,109 in the USA, 175 in Canada and 130 in Europe, 300 elsewhere).[4] After 15 years of work and campaigning by Baynes, the national bison herd had increased to 20,000. He was famous for his tame bison and for driving around the park in a carriage pulled by a pair of bison War Whoop and Tomahawk, trained by him in an effort to promote the usefulness of the breed as draught animals. Baynes commented, "Of all the works of the late Mr. Austin Corbin, the preservation of that herd of bison was the one that would earn his country's deepest gratitude. His experiment led to the founding of the American Bison Society and was connected, directly or otherwise, with the formation of some of our national parks."
He campaigned against wild birds being killed for their plumage. In 1913 he established one of the earliest bird sanctuaries (the Meriden Bird Club) at his home at Meriden, New Hampshire, which occasion was marked by a play being performed there in 1914 written by poet Percy MacKaye and called Sanctuary: A Bird Masque, with actors dressed in bird costumes, including Baynes himself in the role of "Shy, the Naturalist".[5] Amongst the audience was President Woodrow Wilson. Baynes' activity is believed to have maintained the political appetite to ban the importation of bird feathers, included within the Underwood Tariff bill then being debated in Congress. The play was performed across the country and helped to fuel the bird-protection movement developing in the 1910s.[1]
Baynes investigated vivisection and the claims of anti-vivisectionists.[6] He visited laboratories where experiments were carried out and came to the unexpected conclusion that little pain had been inflicted on the animals which he believed was insignificant in comparison to the relief from pain the research had given humans.[6]
He authored the article "The Truth about Vivisection" for the Woman's Home Companion in July, 1921. In this article, Baynes supported vivisection and critiqued the arguments of anti-vivisectionists.[6] Baynes publicly declared himself a supporter of vivisection which caused great controversy. He was attacked by anti-vivisection organizations as a fake humanitarian and a supporter of animal cruelty.[6] Baynes received much abusive mail from a threatening nature. Walter Hadwen for the American Anti-Vivisection Society wrote a rebuttal to Baynes' article, stating it was filled with misinformation.[7] However, Baynes received support from W. W. Keen, Henry Cantwell Wallace, Frederic Augustus Lucas and many other academics and doctors.[6]
Baynes defended vivisection for developing methods of disease prevention.[6] In 1923, he authored a pamphlet Vivisection and Modern Miracles.
He died aged 56 on January 21, 1925, at his home "Sunset Ridge",[1] Meriden, Sullivan County, New Hampshire, US. His ashes were scattered on Croydon Mountain near his home, which event is commemorated on a local monument inscribed: Here were scattered the ashes of Ernest Harold Baynes, lover of animals and men, and loved of them. May 1, 1868, January 21, 1925.[1]
Earnest Harold Baynes appears in Annie Hartnett's novel, Unlikely Animals. Also going by Harold, he appears as a ghost to the protagonist Emma Starling's father, Clive. His writings depicting relationships with the animals in his home also appear frequently, symbolizing a new section of the novel.