page_title: Edward Avery McIlhenny
hierarchical_section_title: Edward Avery McIlhenny
caption_attribution_description: Edward A. McIlhenny
context_page_description: Edward Avery McIlhenny, son of Tabasco brand pepper sauce tycoon Edmund McIlhenny, was an American businessman, explorer, bird bander and conservationist. He established a private wildlife refuge around his family estate on Avery Island and helped in preserving a large coastal marshland in Louisiana as a bird refuge. He also introduced several exotic plants into Jungle Gardens, his private wildlife garden.
  McIlhenny is sometimes blamed for the introduction of exotic coypu, also known as nutria, into Louisiana where they are a major ecological problem. Although it is now known that he was neither the first to introduce their farming in the area or to release them into the wild, he was one of the first proponents of the animals' introduction and an avid self-promoter, so his tall tales soon became local legend and he has become inextricably linked with the origin of nutria in the state.
context_section_description: Edward Avery McIlhenny (March 29, 1872 – August 8, 1949), son of Tabasco brand pepper sauce tycoon Edmund McIlhenny, was an American businessman, explorer, bird bander and conservationist. He established a private wildlife refuge around his family estate on Avery Island and helped in preserving a large coastal marshland in Louisiana as a bird refuge. He also introduced several exotic plants into Jungle Gardens, his private wildlife garden. 
  McIlhenny is sometimes blamed for the introduction of exotic coypu, also known as nutria, into Louisiana where they are a major ecological problem.  Although it is now known that he was neither the first to introduce their farming in the area or to release them into the wild, he was one of the first proponents of the animals' introduction and an avid self-promoter, so his tall tales soon became local legend and he has become inextricably linked with the origin of nutria in the state.
caption: Edward Avery McIlhenny, portrait from Bird Lore (1916)
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