Yay! The Migratory Bird Treaty (from 1918, if I'm not mistaken)is one of the
most successful laws ever passed by Congress. Politics is not the subject of
this list serve, but we all know that birds can't vote, and it's up to us to
protect them.
Y'all probably know this, I'm sure, but that law was passed to prevent the
destruction of birds due to over-hunting for fashion (the aigrette feathers of
egrets in breeding plumage being in high fashion in the 1910s, resulting in
wholesale destruction of rookeries) and also hunting for just-the-hell-of-it.
The recent, visible extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and the Carolina
Parakeet, the last survivors of which both died at the Cincinnati Zoo, had a
lot to do with compelling this law into being.
I read a book about extinct North American birds that gave an account of an
ornithologist in the late 19th Century standing on 14th Street in Manhattan, a
busy commercial street, and identifying dozens of species of songbirds—all
stuffed and mounted on hats!
Since then, the destruction of birds has largely moved from individual
irresponsibility to industrial. Starting at least since the last know breeding
ground of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, the "Singer Tract," was sold by the
Singer Sewing Machine Company in order to supply wood for ammunition cases in
WWII . . . and on to DDT, and Exxon Valdez, and BP Horizon, and so many in
between.
At this point I'm just writing out of spontaneous glee for the fact that that
this is an important and useful law, and I'm thrilled that it, too, is saved
from extinction.
Bill Wenthe
On Monday, March 8, 2021, 08:11:07 PM CST, Carol Lee <spwrc1@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-policy-that-weakened-wild-bird-protections-is-revoked