The beautiful martyr

Man, since he first walked out the swamps of Africa — or if you prefer was driven out of the garden of Eden — has been dependent on the Earth’s natural resources for home, food and fiber. Some people are responsible for their actions when harvesting such resources. Others? Well, history speaks for itself, especially when it comes to fashion…

During the late 1800s and the early 1900s, egrets such as the one pictured above, were hunted almost to extinction for only one reason: Greed.

The bird’s beautiful whites plumes (feathers/aigrettes) were used to decorate women’s hats. In 1903, Egret plumes were so popular that they were worth twice their weight in gold, literally; aigrettes sold for a small fortune at the turn of the century to ‘plumassiers,’ merchants who prepared feathers for the fashion industry — for over $1,000 per kilogram!

It takes about four birds to provide an ounce of plumes, so these sales were responsible for the death of more than 200,000 birds. The demand for plumes decimated not only egret populations, but heron and grebe numbers as well.

A patch of feathers torn from the breasts of slaughtered grebes was marketed as “Oregon Sable.” Even owls suffered, losing their heads for a display on a hat of high fashion. During nesting season, when Snowy Egrets show their beautiful mating egrettes aigrettes, plume-hunters slaughtered them by the tens of thousands from Florida to the Pacific Northwest.

In 1886, George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream, invited readers to write in and sign a pledge against harming any bird. Close to 40,000 people responded and Grinnell named this fledgling group the Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds, after the American naturalist and bird artist John James Audubon.

Iowa Congressman John Lacey, while serving in the House of Representatives in the spring of 1900, introduced a law that would protect birds throughout the nation. It was signed into law by President William McKinley on May 25, 1900 and known today as The Lacey Act.

It was directed toward the preservation of game and wild birds by making it a federal crime to poach game in one state with the purpose of selling the bounty in another. It was also concerned with the problem of the introduction of non-native, or exotic species of birds and animals into native ecosystems and sought to buttress state laws already in existence for the protection of game and birds.

That was all that William L. Finley, Oregon’s first game warden, needed to crack down on millenaries producing hats with wild bird feathers in them — and women who wore them.

In the early part of the 1900s, Finley walked the streets of downtown Portland arresting women wearing egret feathers in their hats.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an executive order declaring Pelican Island in Florida as the first federal bird sanctuary. This was the seed kernel for what later became the National Wildlife Refuge System.

In 1902 National Audubon hired 33-year-old Guy Bradley to watch over the water birds in Florida.

On July 8, 1905, at the age of 35, Guy Bradley was shot and killed in the line of duty attempting to arrest a well-known plume hunter for killing egrets on Cape Sable, Florida.

This tragic incident aroused public outrage and laws were soon enactedto protect the birds’ nesting colonies and became a rallying point for early conservationists.

As ludicrous as it may sound, it was the new hairstyle of the “Roaring Twenties” that ultimately saved the birds. It actually started a little earlier: In 1913, Irene Castle introduced the “bob” and other hairstyles that would not support large extravagant hats and most plume-hunters were forced to abandon their trade.

It was just in time. In 1912, many people believed the birds were extinct or nearly so.

That year, Dallas Lore Sharp, in company with William L. Finley and Herman T. Bohlman motored from Portland and passed trough Silver Lake. As they drove by the sprawling lakebed, Sharp suddenly stopped the car and exclaimed, “Look! Are those egrets? Sure enough, they had discovered a tiny nesting colony of snow egrets that were thought to be extinct.

Because of all the work of early conservationists, we have the Migratory Bird Act that not only protects living birds but also makes it illegal for anyone to possess any part of a migratory bird. Be warned: that eagle, hawk, or owl feather you picked up and stuffed into your cowboy hat is illegal.

And if you want to enjoy egrets, visit Summer Lake or the Klamath wildlife refuges.