From ‘Pest’ To Extinct — The “Malicious And Foolish Persons” Who Kill Our Wildlife
”The ‘pest’ controllers who ‘managed’ the Passenger Pigeon into oblivion at the turn of the 20th century, seem to still be actively going about their business today….”
We tend to think of conservation as a modern day invention, blaming previous generations for not really caring about wildlife and assuming that they didn’t have much awareness of the need to protect threatened species. Indeed we often blame them for remorselessly hunting species to extinction — which they did in some cases — just as they still do today…..
Now, in the 21st century, we claim (with a degree of smugness) that we are the ones who know better, the ones that can ‘save the planet’, the generation that really truly cares about the imminent demise of the rare animals that managed somehow to survive the apparently callous attitudes of our ancestors.
But it’s wrong thinking on two counts.
Because in 2019, not only do we destroy wildlife habitat at a terrifying pace, we also still hunt animals voraciously to the very brink of extinction. We are not necessarily the enlightened modern society that we proudly declare to be, because in fact many of our Victorian ancestors were just as pro-active in trying to conserve wildlife in their day as we are today.
I’ve discovered that more than a hundred years ago, the public were all too aware of the damage human beings were wreaking on other species — and people were doing everything they could to deal with the problem, desperately seeking solutions to everything from uncontrolled hunting to over-fishing and habitat destruction.
In fact they cared then just as much as we do now.
In other words, shockingly, nothing has changed.
Persecuted as ‘pests’, now lost to the world forever.
Take this question asked by a US newspaper way back in 1874.
“Is our race the butcher race of the world? …Slaughtering animals, birds and fishes from pure wantonness.” (Morning Union, 31 July 1874)
Clearly shocked by the extermination of wild creatures, the same newspaper went on to report that “Salmon have been destroyed in the rivers, whales in the seas. A war of extermination is now being waged against seals.”
On the day that the Morning Union newspaper wrote that piece, nearly 150 years ago, several species were on the verge of extinction, including the bird that was once perhaps the most numerous on the whole planet, the Passenger Pigeon.
Persecuted and ‘controlled’ as a ‘pest’, the eventual fate of the Passenger Pigeon was an alarm call to the world.
A great many people tried to stop the slaughter of this beautiful bird, but the killing went on. Shot for food and sport, and due to its unwarranted reputation as an agricultural pest.
By the early 20th century, the world was finally waking up to a gut wrenching truth.
An article appeared in a Chicago newspaper in the spring of 1910, entitled “A Disgrace To The American Nation”.
Chicago Livestock World described a country clinging to a forlorn hope that it might not be too late to save the iconic bird that had once filled the skies of America.
These beautiful birds had been so numerous that they were treated as ‘pests’ and it was beginning to dawn on people that this had been a terrible mistake. The American Ornithologists Union, in desperation, offered 1,000 Dollars to anyone in the country who could locate the active nest of a Passenger Pigeon, the hope being to save the species. “It is confidently expected,” they wrote, “that a few isolated colonies of these birds are still left”.
Alas, as we now know, the once ubiquitous bird was by then already extinct.
No more were ever found alive.
Persecuted as ‘pests’, now lost to the world forever.
The story of this once common species is one of the most tragic in the history of extinctions and a shameful example of human failing. This beautiful pigeon had been persecuted for decades.
No species is a ‘pest’…
The whole sorry saga still rings loudly today, as arguments rage about whether this or that species is a ‘pest’.
From Magpies to Feral Pigeons, Grey Squirrels to Mountain Hares, we hear the arrogant people who defend extermination, patronisingly explaining to us why the ‘pests’ need to be destroyed.
No species is a pest. Let’s be clear on that. It’s not open to debate.
Some creatures might be an obstacle to human progress, that doesn’t mean they are a pest.
Really we have learnt nothing. Today in the UK, laws are passed, enabling those, with a whim to kill, the legal right to exterminate any number of troublesome species. Creatures whose populations number considerably less than that of the Passenger Pigeon.
Make no mistake, at the hands of the wrong humans, no creature is safe from extinction.
Heavy fines for “malicious and foolish persons who shoot birds”, United States, 1903
And, as I have long suspected, we have not progressed in our attitudes to legal protection for wildlife.
In 1903, again way more than a hundred years ago, we find announcements in the newspapers, particularly in the USA, warning of heavy fines for “malicious and foolish persons who shoot birds”. (Kingston Daily Freeman, 29 July 1903)
The tide was changing and you might think that debate over the rights and wrongs of killing wildlife would have long been consigned to history.
Yet here we are in 2019, and the newspapers here in the UK are full of arguments for and against the right to shoot birds. Really? Have we progressed at all? It seems that every generation has its “malicious and foolish persons” only now they are apparently officially tolerated, even encouraged, by skewed laws that favour those who claim to ‘control’ and ‘manage’ wildlife.
The ‘pest’ controllers who ‘managed’ the Passenger Pigeon into oblivion at the turn of the 20th century, seem to still be actively going about their business today.
Masquerading their blood lust in clothes of virtue….
It is kind of depressing to discover that the situation hasn’t significantly changed. Two groups of people exist within society, those who have compassion for all the creatures inhabiting this tiny planet and those who, in one way or another, seek to kill them. Perhaps another group of people has entered the equation now, those who simply don’t care.
But, while we must remember the honorable efforts of those of our ancestors who tried to protect threatened species, perhaps the ones which should concern us most of all now are the very same “malicious and foolish persons” that thwarted true conservationists’ efforts all those years ago, and still do to this day, masquerading their blood lust in clothes of virtue and excusing their immorality with a sanctimonious claim that they care about our wildlife.
