In 1898…

A movement was born to protect magical creatures and their habitats.

The ‘Save the Munbax’ Task Force at the Hemenway Estate in 1892

Cousins Henrietta Hemenway and Mina Phipps roused the skills, talents and passions of the magical community of New England to save the habitat of the endangered (and at that time, quite rare) Northern Dimmoth Munbax. The outpouring of support was so resounding that the dangers posed to the Munbax’s habit were discovered and its population rebounded, becoming the healthy, numerous wild species that you see today perhaps when you are hiking or driving in wooded areas.

Hemenway and Phipps knew, after seeing the difference they could make in magical ecology and awareness, that their activism could not stop there. This is when they founded The American Society for the Protection of Magical Creatures

MIDCENTURY DECLINE

Professor Rosemary Vitus teaches a young magical how to plant a New English Mandrake in the early 1900’s

Any good organizations goes through difficult times and the ASPMC saw a decline in membership after the Anseri scandal of 1932.

The Society grew and increased in membership for decades after 1898. The national office was established at the Hemenway estate in Milton while dedicated satellite ASPMC offices popped up around the country. Through the early 1900’s, the magical community of New England rallied for the protection of batcoons, cetaceous capraphins and flying fischers. In the southeast, successful campaigns created land trusts to save the habitat of the mycolotl and in the southwest of the US, the gamalama was brought back from near extinction. (Our collection of historic artists renderings of these animals can be seen in our archives.) By the early 1920’s, the ASPMC’s membership was over 25,000 concerned magical people across the country who cared deeply about the conservation and preservation of magical creatures. Our education programs reached out to young magicals and ASPMC summer camps allowed young people to explore the magical wilderness under the guidance of a trained professional.

Captain L. Sturgeon Widgeon of Back Bay poses with a newly recovered munbax.

The depression through the 1930’s saw a serious decline in membership and a contracting of ASPMC offices across the country. In 1932, the Boston Blabber newspaper printed an unfounded story that the ASPMC was keeping flocks of rare Gilded Anseri (more commonly known as Golden Geese) on our Hemenway property in order to fund our research deeply hurt our standing in the magical community. ASPMC Board president at the time, Aletha Phipps, wisely brought and won a defamation and libel suit against the Boston Babbler tabloid for spreading this untrue story - but the damage had been done: our support had dwindled, leaving the ASPMC with the only remaining chapter at the original site of the Hemenway property in MA.

Through the war and onwards through the early 2000’s, the ASPMC survived as a small, insular nonprofit housed at the Hemenway Estate, where a few, dedicated maginaturalists and magiconservationists continued their mostly unrecognized research. The public arm of the society was virtually nonexistent and the board consisted of descendants of the original Save the Munbax Task Force, who met once a year to satisfy our paperwork requirements.

THE ASPMC TODAY

The ASPMC is now a thriving magical community with offices across the country!

Modern citizen scientists testing water for levels of flotsam and jetsam at the Hatherly estate, to keep the munbax population healthy

Today, the ASPMC is a healthy, exciting scientific historical organization engaging the community. We speak for those who cannot. (Until sometimes we find out that they can but had a very strong regional accent.) In 2020 we realized it was time to augment our successful astral projection outreach with a non-magical format: the website that you see today!

It rests on you, dear member, to follow in the footsteps of those who came before us and protect and preserve nature’s magical creatures. Help us research, observe magical creatures in your own backyard, connect with others in the magical community about the importance of mystical nature. Here on this very site you can find ways to help us as a citizen scientist and keep our world safe for magical creatures

In the early 2000’s after the devastating official listing of the thelonious beetlefish on the magical extinction list and the subsequent public outrage, the magical community renewed their public interest in the preservation of magical creatures. ASPMC leadership passed through the generations but after 2010, our ASPMC board grew to 10 members. Younger magicals, concerned for the future of the magical world, reached out to their own community to grow our membership. In 2007 we began public school outreach programs and in December 2014 we reopened the Hemenway Estate to our first ever noxious pixie count with over 2 dozen participants and only 3 medical incidents!!