Don's Jersey Birding: What will our legacy be?
Golden Eagle.
Photo credit: aboutbaldeagles.com
At the strong insistence of my wife, I was going through some of my old books to see what I could get rid of and maybe donate. I came upon a stack of old outdoor magazines that I bought at a flea market many years ago. I think I gave the gentleman a buck for the whole box. I never really looked through any of them and just put them away until now, about 30 years later, I thought I would finally take a look inside before they made it to the recycle bin.
I picked one out of the pile. It was a 1938 June edition of Fur-Fish-Game, a Harding's magazine, and on page 9 there was an article by Elmer Keith entitled "The True Status of the Golden Eagle". The article talked about why the Golden Eagle should be hunted and trapped because it prays on game animals, such as Mule Deer and Mountain Sheep. The writer says Golden Eagles are worth much more than the "Worst predator in the West".
The article goes on to say that the cousin of the Golden Eagle, the Bald Eagle, is bad enough on the Salmon and that is why the "territory" of Alaska pays a one dollar bounty on them. Then it says it was a grave mistake to remove the bounty on Golden Eagles because of some publicity being started in the East. The writer tells about getting $0.25 cents per Golden Eagle feather and continues on the best rifles and traps to use on them and even has pictures of hunters holding up Golden Eagles as their trophies.
Shocking? Disturbing? What were those people thinking? What was the matter with them? Were they stupid? All these questions went through my head when reading this, but then I took a breath and reminded myself this article was written in 1938. This was obviously an excepted practice because they made it a feature article in this outdoor magazine and my guess is that most people and scientists thought killing off these magnificent birds was not only acceptable, but good sport.
So before we get on our high horse and think that we are so much more enlightened and better than the good folks back in 1938, I think we should take a look at ourselves and some of the environmental issues we are confronting in New Jersey. We should try to decide if we are really so much smarter than they were and more importantly, if folks in 2080 will be looking back at us asking, what were they thinking?
What came to my mind right off the bat was global warming. Prominent people and politicians tend to believe that global warming is made up and we really don’t need to do anything, that it’s just bad publicity by some people in the “East”. Far more catastrophic than the slaughter of Eagles, will people look back at us and wonder what we were waiting for?
Saving the Highlands. Seems like a no brainer, right? How about preserving our drinking water and saving some of the last pristine areas of New Jersey? Some important people think it is a bad idea. In 70 years or so, what will be said of us if we fail to do what seems like what intelligent people would do? What are we thinking by failing to protect important bird habitat or over using pesticides in our own backyards?
I hope if someone in the future decides to open up some old magazines, they will find an article about how some people decided to do the right thing or about how a group of people in New Jersey saved the Highlands, helped slow down global warming, and preserved critical wild areas of New Jersey. I don’t want anyone to see us in some old magazine, holding up that "Golden Eagle", and showing the world how we failed.
Don Torino is the Education Chairperson for Bergen County Audubon Society.
Previous birding exclusives:
- Don's Jersey Birding: The Un-Common Grackle
- Linda’s For the Birds: Chasing Crossbills
- Don's Jersey Birding: Finding the Right Birding Buddy
- Don's Jersey Birding: Birding the Blizzard
- Linda's for the Birds: What is that bird at my feeder? - Part 3
- Linda's For the Birds: Of Birds and Blizzards
- Don's Jersey Birding: That's why they call them bird feeders
Posted by WILDNEWJERSEY at 2/1/2011 7:00 AM 
Categories: Don's Jersey Birding
Tags: golden eagle global warming furfishgame hardings highlands
Categories: Don's Jersey Birding
Tags: golden eagle global warming furfishgame hardings highlands
None of us were alive when the original conservation movement that resulted in the founding of the National Audubon Society began. We owe a great debt to those early conservationists. Entire populations of herons and egrets were being systematically wiped out in the name of fashion in the form of ladies' hat feathers. At one point, the breeding plumes of those birds were worth more than their weight in gold. Had that wholesale extermination not been stopped, we in NJ, and all over the country, would never be able to experience the stately presence of a great blue heron soaring overhead or silently studying a river eddy, or the enchanting beauty of snowy and great egrets, or the craftiness of a green heron placing a twig on the water to entice a fish to surface. Many other birds with elongated plumes were in danger as well but particular species were being exterminated as they were colony nesters. Those large birds congregated in great numbers in communal nesting areas to lay eggs and raise their young. That aspect alone made them easy prey for the feather hunters who would kill off the parents for their feathers, leaving the chicks to starve. It was really that close, we almost lost them! The great conservation president, Teddy Roosevelt, created the Sanibel Island Sanctuary in Florida (that was a precursor to the National Park system) as a result of the dire straits of those birds. Those conservationists had an uphill battle facing off against profiteering and the then current whim of the fashion industry. Nothing like that had ever been done before. People either couldn't or didn't believe or didn't care that it was not an unlimited resource. Sound familiar?
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