ENDANGERED SPECIES

Feathers adorned fashionable late-nineteenth century hats—so many that the birds who contributed the feathers became endangered species. Plume hunters in the Everglades shot out rookeries and slaughtered egrets, herons and spoonbills. Audubon warden Guy Bradley became the Everglades’ first martyr when he was murdered at the Cuthbert Lake Rookery (near Flamingo) in 1905. Changing fashions and national laws ended the slaughter in the 1910s.

This view: “The cruelties of fashion : fine feathers make fine birds.” From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (November 10, 1883), p. 184.

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