Ornithological News
Audubon Society Campaigns to Curb Feather Trade
The recent popularity of quills and other feathers in the millinery trade and the resulting threat to many wild birds has stirred the National Audubon Society and other conservation organizations to the most active bird protection campaign since the close of the earlier effort of this sort in 1913. “Massacred for Millinery”, (the title of Circular No. 45, written by Richard H. Pough,) reports very vividly the threatened reduction of numbers of such birds as cranes, condors, the osprey, and eagles, unless the trend of fashion, public attitude, and corrective legislation can promptly be geared together in a sensible, effective manner to prevent current and threatened abuses.
In brief, the present crisis arises from the popularity of quills on hats and from certain defects in the customs regulations. A loophole in the tariff law permits hat feathers to be brought into this country as “fishing fly” feathers. Also it seems plain that many feathers of wild birds are entered falsely as “raised in domestication”. New legislation is sought to help stop these leaks; hut probably the best answer lies in the educational program to discourage the use of feathers. Even ornithologists cannot tell the origin of most feathers without extensive comparative material, so obviously the average buyer cannot be expected to discriminate.
