History

Waterfowl were an early and enduring interest for S. Dillon Ripley, who spent weekends and summers in Litchfield, Connecticut, during childhood.  He started his first duck pond at the age of 17 with the gift of a pair of blue-winged teal and a pair of redheads from his mother.  Alain White, the naturalist who gave the 4,000 acre White Memorial Foundation to Litchfield, provided additional waterfowl for Dillon’s early collection.  Dillon Ripley's interest in birds grew over the years, along with his collection of rare waterfowl.  He named his network of ponds, pens and barns "Paddling Ponds," and his interest grew into a lifetime devotion to the conservation of rare, threatened and endangered species of birds.

Dillon Ripley became an ornithologist, a teacher, a historian, a researcher and a world traveler.  He was a professor at Yale University and the director of Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.  He also was the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for two decades and the author of numerous books and articles.  His wife, Mary Livingston Ripley, who became a self-taught entomologist, shared his interests and together they traveled the world, finding and collecting rare and exotic species of birds and insects.
                                                                                                                              S. Dillon Ripley
Dillon Ripley developed an impressive list of lifelong accomplishments; however, it was his passion for waterfowl that laid the groundwork for LRWC.  An avid aviculturist, Dillon Ripley is credited with being the first person to propagate successfully many threatened and endangered species in captivity, such as the red-breasted goose, nene goose, emperor goose and Laysan teal.  Dr. Ripley also raised various endangered species in Litchfield for re-introduction to the wild. One important example was during the late 1950s and early 1960s when the Ripleys were the only people in North America raising nene (Hawaiian) geese, which were threatened with extinction in Hawaii. They sent a small flock of birds to Hawaii where, along with birds raised by Peter Scott's Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in England, they were released on the island of Maui.  The reintroduction program was successful, and by the late1960s, the total population of nene geese increased to 500, up from only 50 birds fifteen years earlier.

S. Dillon Ripley and Mary Livingston Ripley

Inherent in the legacy of LRWC, is Dillon Ripley’s recognition of the potential for his collection of waterfowl and captive breeding efforts to provide an educational background for increasing conservation awareness.  In 1984, Dillon and Mary created the Kilvarock Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to captive waterfowl conservation.  Kilvarock evolved into the Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Sanctuary, as conservation interests beyond captive waterfowl began to emerge.  In 2007, the Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Sanctuary changed its name to the Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Conservancy to reflect additional changes to the organization’s mission.  After the death of Mary Ripley in 1996 and Dillon Ripley in 2001, the Ripley's three daughters, Julie, Rosemary, and Sylvia, continued the work of LRWC along with LRWC's Board of Directors.  Today LRWC is one of the preeminent facilities for breeding rare and endangered waterfowl, with an integrated program promoting research, education and conservation action for waterfowl and wetland habitats.

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