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Sarasota News Leader January 18, 2013 Page 74 cies of red rockfish in the Sea of Marmara. He The professional plume hunters truly underdutifully named it Sebates Leninii. Comrade stood the consequences of this mass slaughter and how to profit from it. By the end of the Fish? 19th century, Florida had lost 95 percent of its No, it was not a disinterest in nature; it was Great Egret population. It was the aigrettes, not understanding that the source was not in- the long, exquisitely pristine back feathers of finite, and many species were being hunted to Ardea Alba's breeding period, that professionextinction. Better guns, more convenient and al plume hunters prized above all. The price affordable travel and generous amounts of lei- they fetched reflected their vanishing supply: sure time enabled more people to hunt and One ounce of aigrettes sold for more than an ounce of gold. kill an astonishing number of buffalo, wolves and birds faster and with greater efficiency. The plume hunters knew that brooding Egrets The Passenger Pigeon, once among the most would rather die than abandon their chicks, so abundant birds in North America, was hunted it was easy to kill the parents in the nests and leave the chicks trampled or starving — and to oblivion by the early 20th century. that practice extended to all the other nesters The American Ornithologists' Union reported around Ardea Alba. in the late 1890s that an estimated 5 million Educating people about the brutal manner in birds were killed annually for the fashion in- which feathers were collected turned public dustry alone. That is a lot of dead birds. When opinion solidly against the plumage fashion inthat yearly figure is multiplied by the decades dustry and built support for conservationists it took people to understand the supply was such as George Bird Grinnell, the founder of finite, the numbers become incomprehensible. the Audubon Society. A Paradise Tanager also would have made a splendid hat adornment in decades past. Photo by Rick Greenspun