In January 1922, a group of 54 outdoor sports enthusiasts, fishermen and hunters gathered in Chicago to formally establish one of the country’s first national wildlife conservation organizations, the Izaak Walton League of America (IWLA). The group was named for a 17th century British writer, Izaak Walton, who was an impassioned angler and a gifted biographer and essayist who wrote eloquently about fishing and a greater connection between mankind and our natural surroundings.
Among the group’s founders were Gene Stratton-Porter and her husband, Charles Dorwin Porter, who, like Izaak Walton himself, enjoyed fishing and connecting with the natural world. By 1922, Gene had achieved national and international fame and fortune for her novels, nonfiction nature studies, and her nature photography. Not only were the Porters donors to the organization. The League’s other founders asked Gene to write periodic columns and feature stories for their monthly magazine Outdoor America.
As well as her published books, Gene was a successful columnist for leading nature monthlies like Recreation and Outing magazines, where she wrote about her passion for nature photography, as well as widely popular publications like McCalls and Better Housekeeping. Her articles for Outdoor America offered her an opportunity to use her own influential voice and first-person accounts to reach thousands of like-minded readers. She encouraged Outdoor Americasubscribers to use their money and connections to help influence social and political change by drawing attention to the crises facing the “more-than-human” world, including severe degradation and pollution of America’s waterways, forests and animal habitats.
In one of Outdoor America’s first monthly publications, Gene wrote a column titled “All Together, Heave,” in which she spoke of the importance of working collectively to preserve and promote the greater environmental good. “This world has never known a country equal to ours in size, having greater natural beauty of conformation, diversity of scenery and wealth of animal and plant life,” began her front-page column in December 1922. “We, today, are called upon to answer for our stewardship of this plethora of riches and beauty. We admit that we have handled those natural wonders, this profusion of riches, in a spirit of insane recklessness.”
In another Outdoor America article from October 1923, Gene wrote an open letter of protest to President Calvin Coolidge, drawing attention to the intentional drainage of wetland regions in the upper Mississippi River basin in Minnesota. At the time, efforts were growing to turn more and more of the natural marshes into farms, a legislative strategy that had proved ineffective in much of Gene’s own northern Indiana territory near her beloved Limberlost Swamp.
“With all my heart,” she stated earnestly, “I beg that, if it is humanely possible, my dear Mr. President, you will for a few hours forget the heavy burdens which daily I pray the good God to make lighter for you and to spend that time in deep study of our position here in this stretch of country affected if this drainage crime is allowed to go through.” Through her efforts, along with those of Aldo Leopold and other noted IWLA members, the government enacted the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge Act in 1924, legislation that gave Congress the authority to purchase critical bottomlands and wetlands to create a sanctuary for fish, birds and game. At the time, it was one of the most significant political breakthroughs for waterfowl protection in the United States.
Today, the vision and zeal of Gene Stratton-Porter and the other founders of the Izaak Walton League continue. The organization still exists with more than 40,000 members in more than 200 regional chapters throughout the United States. In the new WTIU documentary Gene Stratton-Porter: Music of the Wild, we interview Jodi Labs, an environmental attorney and past president of the organization. We conducted the interview at Osprey Point, a wildlife sanctuary managed by the IWLA, located just outside Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“I think Gene’s legacy is the fact that she allowed people and enabled people to actually feel a connection with nature,” Jodi noted of Stratton-Porter’s work with the Izaak Walton League of America. “She encouraged people to get out there and experience it firsthand, so that they understood what she was so passionate about, in order for them to take action in their own way.”
Gene Stratton-Porter: Music of the Wild premieres in November 2026 on WTIU and other PBS stations all over the country. Foundation grant dollars, corporate funders and individual donors help support our WTIU production team as we continue our work to explore these important stories of Indiana’s history and share them with a national PBS audience. Thank you for your continued support of this valuable community resource.
