Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

by Mary Huston Gregory

No article on birds would be complete that does not dwell on the enormous destruction of birds for trimming hats. As one writer puts it, we pay eight hundred million dollars a year for hat trimmings, assuming the insect ravages to be due to the killing of our birds for millinery purposes. While this is exaggerated, it is undoubtedly true that this is the largest cause of the destruction of the birds of America.

The Audubon society says that we, as a nation, use 150,000,000 birds a year for trimming hats alone and that this single item would save our crops from insect destruction and largely rid our fields of weeds.

If a few hundred dollars are stolen from a bank, the greatest efforts are made to catch the thief, and if possible to get the money back; but the great army of insects destroy each year, almost as much in money value as all the national banks in the country have on deposit, and this wholesale destruction might largely be prevented if every woman and girl took (and kept) a pledge not to use wings, breasts, or birds on her hats. There is no objection to the use of ostrich feathers, which are carefully plucked from the live birds. The feathers grow again, just as the wool grows on sheep that have been sheared. Neither is there any objection to using the feathers of the barn-yard fowls which are killed for food.

Only a little less is the loss caused by so-called "sportsmen," men who kill only for the pleasure of shooting, or who, because they like the taste of quail, shoot as many as they can in a day instead of only enough to satisfy hunger. Often a farmer sells for a very small amount the privilege of hunting on his farm, thinking he is making money when in fact he is losing ten dollars for every one he makes.

The quail, sparrows and other birds on the farm are destroyed. As a result the weed seeds are not eaten and a big crop comes up in the spring. In the summer there are no quail on the farm to destroy insects. The insects and the weeds together make the crop poorer, and the owner feels that farming is growing less profitable, when in fact he has failed to take ordinary precautions to obtain a good crop by protecting the birds.

With the huntsman and his bag of birds we may class the small boy with his rifle or sling-shot. A single boy does little harm but all the boys in the country taken together do a grave amount of damage.

Last in the list comes the egg hunters, who by robbing nests can kill four or five birds at a time, simply for mischief. A party of boys can, by a day's sport, make a serious difference in the number of birds in a region where they are not plentiful and thus have a large share in damaging the crops.

If, then, birds play so large a part in the welfare of the farm and in turn in the prices of farm crops, fruit, lumber and cotton cloth, it is most desirable that every effort be made to reduce the numbers of harmful birds and to encourage the useful species.

Many of the states now have excellent laws for the protection of birds; but without a large number of game wardens, it is difficult to enforce the laws closely unless the public sentiment is strongly against the killing of birds. Laws should be made to protect birds against the egg hunter, (except for the purpose of study, and then a license should be required), sling-shots should be prohibited, as they already are in many places. All hunters should be required to have a license, the number of birds killed by a single person in a single day should be limited, and certain birds should always be protected by law. These laws should be as nearly uniform as possible in all the states and there must be a desire on the part of all the people to see these laws obeyed.

The boys and girls should be banded together in the schools or in societies and pledged to protect birds and not to destroy them. The girls should pledge themselves not to wear birds for ornament.