The Feather Trade and the American Conservation from the National Museum of American History - americanhistory.si.edu blogs.howstuffworks.com (Excerpt) The plumes produced by Florida's egrets when they're rearing their young — were so popular in 1900, they were more valuable per ounce than gold. Plume hunters killed 5 million a year, decimating Florida's shore bird population. See video here: jezebel.com Feather Wars: Surviving Fashion 1870-1920 www.historicalsocietypbc.org www.palmbeachdailynews.com Wind Across the Everglades (1958) - "www.youtube.com / www.imdb.com --- Plume trade: During two walks along the streets of Manhattan in 1886, the American Museum of Natural History's ornithologist, Frank Chapman, spotted 40 native species of birds including sparrows, warblers, and woodpeckers. But the birds were not flitting through the trees -- they had been killed, and for the most part, plucked, disassembled, or stuffed, and painstakingly positioned on three-quarters of the 700 women's hats Chapman saw. The North American feather trade was in its heyday. (Continued) www.stanford.edu Hats Off to Birds - museum.gov.ns.ca By 1903, the price of feathers had risen to $80 an ounce, and at far more than the price of gold -- the same year that the first national wildlife refuge -- was created by presidential decree by Teddy Roosevelt, an avid sportsman who connsidered plume hunting despicable. Source: www.ibrrc.org --- R. Turner Wilcox's THE MODE IN HATS AND HEADDRESS, published ...
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