In the last half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth, it was all the rage for women to adorn their hats with the feathers of exotic birds. I’ve seen some of these lavishly decorated hats in museums and it is a little difficult to imagine that well-thought-of ladies of the time would have been caught dead in them. But fashion is a funny beast and the long, wispy egret, Ibis, heron, and spoonbill feathers really are one of nature’s wonders – though they look a lot better on the birds than they do on the dusty museum hats.
Even the lesser birds: the terns, the gulls, the albatrosses, the pelicans, and even the humming birds were killed for their feathers. Some like to say that they were hunted but there wasn’t much hunting to it. Everyone knew where the birds were, they were often flightless as they took care of chicks on rookeries where their kind has breed for centuries. The birds were shot, clubbed, trapped, and poisoned. Many were only wounded, disabled with a club or a careless shot, long enough for the plume “hunter” to pull the best feathers. Many tens of thousands of birds were left to die in the coastal marshes and swamps where such birds congregate to this day. Of course, what the plumes are all about is attracting mates. It must be assumed that what attracted birds to each other for the purpose of procreation must have worked for silly, self-absorbed, nineteenth century ladies and gentlemen. Silliness is no excuse for not knowing that the most sot-after plumbs were those that the birds grew especially for mating and breeding purposes. When the adult birds were killed, the helpless off-spring were left to starve and sizzle in the sun, unprotected in their mangrove incubators. The adults were killed by the millions. The numbers of babies is untold!
In the United States, most of this activity took place on the keys and in the brackish swamps of Florida. The plume “hunters” were blamed for the carnage but they were really mostly crude locals who simply needed a job. The drivers of the great bird pogrom were the milliners and the fashion industry; like the New York business woman who contracted with a French milliner to deliver 40,000 bird skins, or the man who hired Japanese peasants to kill 300,000 sea birds by simply cutting off their wings for the feathers. These are the people who profited from the killing and I’m sure that they figured that the violence and cruelty done to adult birds, and to their chicks, was an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of doing business.
The Lacey Act was passed in 1900 to stop the interstate trade in wild bird and animal parts. It was eventually accepted but not before the Millinery Association fought hard in congress and in the courts. They claimed that such laws would put people out of work – as if their main interest was the paychecks of the poor, dumb, slobs with the clubs and the butcher knives. The individuals and corporations that profited from the plume trade were rotten to the core, but the real engine was the innocent little ladies with the dead pelicans stuck to their heads. Frank Chapman, a very early Audubon Activist called them vulgar and unconscionable. In one hour of walking the streets of Manhattan he counted 174 birds of 40 different species piled on the heads of the women of the “private carriage crowd”.
A year into the twentieth century and a year after the Lacey Act was enacted, Theodore Roosevelt fell heir to the presidency of the United States. That was a bad year for plumb “hunters”, milliners, the fashion industry, and industry in general. In the next eight years he established fourteen bird sanctuaries in the barrier islands, salt marshes and sea grass beds of the Gulf of Mexico. Though he was a Republican he had no time for corporations who put profits above the well being of people and the environment. Most of the bird sanctuaries that he set aside are now in danger of an even more insidious devastation than the plumb trade. They are about to be soaked in crude oil.
At the height of the plumb trade, egret feathers, by the once, were worth twice the price of gold. As with all such commodities, such high prices drove a lot of greed and people got killed as a byproduct. The lying and the finger pointed irrupted as Roosevelt hired and armed wardens to protect the tidewater rookeries of ibis, tri-colored herons, and snowy egrets. He called the entire industry Sordid Bird Butchers and he did not apologize. I can’t help wondering what he would be doing today, as hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of gallons of unchecked oil billows and sloshes toward the sanctuaries that he fought to establish and to protect.
I don’t mean to compare Obama to Roosevelt – that would be unfair for a lot of reasons. But I would like to equate the oil industry to the plume trade. I’d like to draw a parallel between the “private carriage crowd” of the early twentieth century and the “high performance car crowd” of the present century. I see little difference between cutting a bird’s wings off for profit and soaking it in oil for profit. I’d like to call attention to the fact that both these travesties are driven by fashion, vanity, and ignorance. And I’d like to make a similar call to arms as Roosevelt made when he sent armed men into the field to protect what is the heritage of all Americans. I’d like to suggest that there are those who see the destruction of so many birds, and indeed fish and shell fish, as collateral and acceptable damage in the quest to please consumers and produce maximum profit for stockholders. I want to say that I refuse to accept it and I hope that there are lots more people who simply dig their heels in a say “enough”!
If I sit quietly I can feel Teddy Roosevelt rumbling in his grave as the giant, twenty-first century demon billows from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. As it swallows the bird sanctuaries that he fought to establish, my own teeth begin to gnash. I can see it moving through the thousands of islands from Texas to the Atlantic as slick men shift the blame from one greedy suit to the next. I see the inky monster enveloping Breton Island Wildlife Refuge, Tern Island, Shell Key, East Timbalier Island, Island Bay, Palma Sole, Matlacha Pass, Pine Island, Tortuga Key, Key West, Mosquito Inlet, Indian Key, and Passage Key. If that noxious nightmare of crude oil crawls up the east coast of Florida and threatens Pelican Island – the first of all the great American bird sanctuaries – I expect to hear an enormous roar of grieving from Roosevelt’s tomb. A pitiful lament for the birds of the Gulf, and for the souls of us all.
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Thanks for this. My heart has been broken anew, every day, watching the amazing folks from IBRRC and Tri-State Bird Rescue bathe pelicans and gannets and turns and hearing reports of the afflicted people, animals, and landscape (I can’t stomach the thought of what’s happening to the Kemps Ridley sea turtles I spent a winter caring for). I feel utterly helpless (not to mention betrayed by an administration that promised to honor a scientific approach to issues just like this one).
So True. I wish the greedy suits had to
try and help the affected birds and get the oil all over themselves.
Thanks, Dan, for succinctly expressing the rage and frustration of many. I like the term “greedy suits” that certainly champion these risk-filled endeavors without contingency plans. If justice were truly served in the nation, they, not “marijuana convicts” would populate the worse jails in the land!
Amen! I can hear the hearts breaking from the benthic to the littoral. I feel worse for knowing it was coming and that even self immolation on the corporate doorstep wouldn’t have caused a moments hesitation on the race to ruin.
Well said, as always. And lest our neighbors on the Great Plains and elsewhere think this is something happening “somewhere else”, be aware that a major crude-oil pipeline is planned to cross through the Great Plains, potentially threatening the Oglalla Aquifer. Read more at my site: http://markgchurchill.blogspot.com/2010/05/oil-and-water.html
(Sorry to hijack your post, Dan, but I suspect you won’t mind.)
“I’d like to suggest that there are those who see the destruction of so many birds, and indeed fish and shell fish, as collateral and acceptable damage in the quest to please consumers and produce maximum profit for stockholders. I want to say that I refuse to accept it and I hope that there are lots more people who simply dig their heels in a say “enough”!”
WE ALL SHARE THE BLAME, OR QUIT DRIVING
I LIKE YOUR STORIES, THANKS
mcr
As drive my sub-compact car into the parking lot of my exclusive private golf club, my friends in their giant luxury SUV’s laugh at me. You would think more of these well educated people would be able to see the bigger picture.
a good point, but i can’t remember feathers being used for anything BUT fashion. on the other hand, i assume you use trucks on you farm?
Hi Dan, Thanks for writing this article.
Recently, a close friend and I were discussing the oil spill. He referred to it as an “unfortunate accident.” Unfortunate, yes. Accident? Accident implies little or no blame. Accident doesn’t describe the murder of eleven workers and the suffering their families must endure. Accident doesn’t describe thousands of oil covered pelicans, sea gulls, dolphins that will die. Accident doesn’t describe the loss of white sand beaches. Accident doesn’t describe the destruction of an entire marine habitat. Accident doesn’t describe the loss of jobs and devastation of hundreds of coastal communities. Accident doesn’t describe the anger I feel. BP failed to follow costly safety procedures. Considering the greed of many unethical companies, this was inevitable. At the very least, it was gross negligence. My friend’s choice of words,however, was an “unfortunate accident.”
(Not sure he remembers me, but tell Mike I said Hi.)
What also needs to be said is that the destruction of the regulatory agency that allowed this to happen was done by officials elected by the very people they intended to harm. Lies, lies, lies, and more lies.
And no surprise that he was a Republican; the Republican party was roughly the diametric opposite of its current (disgraceful) form today.
You might as well add to your list any coastal sanctuary along the Atlantic coast south of Delaware Bay. At this point, it would take a miracle to keep the oil out of the loop current.
WHAT ABOUT THOSE MIGRATING BIRDS THAT NEED THAT WETLAND TO REFUEL!
BP SENDING THEM A CHECK OR FOOD STAMPS!
LEGIT CLAIMS, GIVE ME A BREAK.
BRAVO,Dan!!
It’s too bad we can’t take those” greedy suits” & coat them in the ooze–maybe then they’d get the picture!-But I doubt it even then. I’ve designed various siphoning devices to extract fuel/ oil from the bilges of yachts and do not understand what “malarchy” is being played by those in charge of the spill. I sure hope they get it stopped & cleaned up soon, or the Gulfstream may take it up the East Coast & on over to Europe. So far, the winds have been tame, but hurricane season opened June 1st, & will go through November 30th. They have the potential to take the ooze almost any where their winds blow! It is FAR PAST the time for this Country, & the World, for that matter,to still be relying on oil,instead of Renewable Energy. Maybe this will give a tad more spark to the kindling to fire up the big logs to burn great flames to make that happen!!!