The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1913-06-09
EFFORTS MADE
TOPROTECT THE
GREAT HERON
EXTREME CRUELTY Is PRAc-
TIcED BY PLUME HUNTERS TO
SECURE FEW FEATHERS, THAT
ARE sNATcHED FROM WOUND
ED BIRDS.
BY WINFIELD JONES.

Washington, D c., June S.-What is
being done to protect the heron in the
United States as well as what has
been done to exterminate it is told in
a bulletin of the United States biolog-
ica1 survey by Welles w. Cooke, an
assistant in that service. The bulletin
is illustrated with twenty-one maps
giving the range in North and South
America of the principal species of
herons. Altogether there are thirty
two species treated.
Mr.. Cook says that the demand of
the military trade for the feathers of
the pluma bearing herons has led
to the practical extinction of several
species, while the whole family of
these birds has been reduced over the
United States to about 5 per cent of
what it was fifty years ago. The
greatest horrors, it is declared, have
been committed practically at the bid
ding of women who have worn algret
plumes in their hats. The snowy al
greet and the larger aigret have been
the heaviest sufferers, and these birds
are already practically exterminated.
There are a few colonies left on some
of the big bird refugees, but there are
scarcely enough, according to the bull
letin, to allow for the reproduction OF
the species.
Possibly few of the women who wear
aigrets know the methods of the plume
hunters, which are inhuman in the ex
IRENE. The plume hunters, when the
birds existed, located the colony by
watching the flight from their feeding
grounds. They selected time when
the young birds had been Matched and
when the adults were bringing them
food.
The hunter simply took his post in
the midst of the colony, killing the old
birds as they came to the nest and
leaving the young to starve. Whether
the birds shot were killed or merely
crippled was a matter of Indifference,
as there were only a few feathers used
from each bird, and the hunter pulled
these out and left the bird to die or
recover, as it happened. The slaugh-
ter in the rookery continued as long as
any of the adults were left alive, owing
to the persistence of the old birds IN
returning to feed their nestlings, no
matter how many Of their fellows were
shot.
The bulletin states that the plumes
Of the snowy aigret were worth their
weight in gold and there was no
chance of stopping the slaughter so
long as there was a market for the
plumes:. Now. however, many of the
states have passed laws not only
against killing the herons, but against
having the Pfumes with inteffe to sell
them. 1t is stated that If this law be-
came general the bird would be effec
lively protected, because there there
would be no market for the feathers
and therefore no inducement to kill
the plume bearers.
The bulletin treats also of all the
other varieties of herons and their mi
grafton habits. Their food as a. rule
is shellfish and frogs. They also de-
stroy many field mice and the destruc-
tive pocket gopher. About the only
place where they ever do any damage
is around fish hatcheries, and, the bull
letin says, they can easily be checked
there as the needs of the individual
case requires.