The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation, and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism, 1850–1920
Andrea L. Smalley, "The Market in Birds: Commercial Hunting, Conservation, and the Origins of Wildlife Consumerism, 1850–1920"
English | ISBN: 1421443406 | 2022 | 320 pages | EPUB | 23 MB
English | ISBN: 1421443406 | 2022 | 320 pages | EPUB | 23 MB
A fascinating look at how a commercial market for birds in the late nineteenth century set the stage for conservation and its legislation.
Between the end of the Civil War and the 1920s, the United States witnessed the creation, rapid expansion, and then disappearance of a commercial market for hunted wild animals. The bulk of commercial wildlife sales in the last part of the nineteenth century were of wildfowl, who were prized not only for their eggs and meat but also for their beautiful feathers. Wild birds were brought to cities in those years to be sold as food for customers' tables, decorations for ladies' hats, treasured pets, and specimens for collectors' cabinets. Though relatively short-lived, this market in birds was broadly influential, its rise and fall coinciding with the birth of the Progressive Era conservation movement.
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