34 United States The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020
O
ne afternoonin 1896, a Bostonian socialite called Harriet
Lawrence Hemenway read an article about the devastation of a
colony of nesting birds by plume-hunters. Disgust at their grisly
trade, which was eradicating millions of birds a year to meet Amer-
icans’ demand for feathery swank, surged in her like a ball of regur-
gitated feathers and crustaceans from a grebe’s crop. This would
prove to be a turning-point in America’s relationship with nature.
Following the example of some similarly well-connected Brit-
ish women—originators of the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds—Hemenway launched a campaign against wearing feathers
for fashion. It was audacious. During two strolls through Manhat-
tan, an ornithologist identified the remnants of 40 native species,
including warblers and woodpeckers, on over 500 women’s heads.
Yet Hemenway’s Massachusetts Audubon Society, named after the
bird-painter James Audubon, was replicated by like-minded wom-
en in over a dozen states. The National Audubon Society they
formed in 1905 was even more effective. It had heavyweight fans
such as Theodore Roosevelt and a flair for sensationalism. “Wom-
an as a bird enemy” was the title of one of its lectures.
Lobbying by Audubon groups helped produce a remarkable se-
ries of bird protections, including the Lacey Act of 1900 and, fol-
lowing a pro-bird pact with British Canada, the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act (mbta) of 1918, which made it illegal to harm most native
birds not hunted for sport. This landmark environmental law—
and model for later ones such as the Endangered Species Act—
probably saved several decorative birds, such as the snowy egret
and sandhill crane, from extinction. Following additional pro-bird
treaties with Mexico, Japan and the Soviet Union, the act now cov-
ers over 1,000 species. Since the 1970s its implementation has been
mainly focused on warding off the threat they face from industrial
development and pollution. After over a million birds were killed
in 2010 by an oil-spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company responsi-
ble, bp, was fined $100m under the mbta. Most of the money was
spent on restoring contaminated bird habitat.
The success of the avian conservation movement has changed
people as well as the outlook for birds. According to a survey by the
usFish and Wildlife Service (fws), America has 45m birdwatch-
ers—roughly three times the number of people who watch Ameri-can football on television. Diverse and widely spread—though
with a tendency to be white, well-educated and female—they are
estimated to spend $41bn a year on bird-related travel and kit. This
mass enthusiasm, which Lexington observed on a recent visit to
the St Marks wildlife refuge in Florida—the first and last landfall
for millions of avian migrants across the Gulf of Mexico—is not
merely a response to America’s even more diverse birdlife. As in
similarly bird-dotty Britain, it is a culture that has sprung from a
political decision to treat birds as precious and inviolable.
Donald Trump’s administration wants to devalue them. A new
regulation published by the fws this month would eviscerate the
mbta by ending the decades-old practice of penalising the “inci-
dental take” of protected birds. So long as a person or company can
claim to have killed or injured birds accidentally, he or it would be
free to do so. Thus, a contractor could hose cliff-swallow nests off a
road bridge, because cleaning the bridge, not killing swallow
chicks, was his intention. If bpkilled another million seabirds, it
would face no penalty under the mbta.
Assailed by Hemenway, the powerful millinery industry
claimed that most of its feathers had been shed naturally. The ar-
guments for the Trump rewrite are equally hollow. Pointing to the
statute’s ambiguous language on incidental take, the administra-
tion claims it “hangs the sword of Damocles” over economic devel-
opment. In fact, after decades of fairly consistent implementation
of the law, America’s industrial-scale bird-killers understand per-
fectly well the potential cost of failing to alert birds to their electric
lines or to cover their oil pits. They also understand the benefits of
working with the fwsto mitigate the slaughter. The administra-
tion’s depiction of government and industry at war over the mbta
is inaccurate. Its predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike,
tended to view the law mainly as a means to improve industrial
practice, and they therefore penalised only persistent or egregious
offenders. The number of birds drowning in oil-pits, meanwhile,
fell by half, to around 750,000 a year.
Despite improvements in signalling electric lines, these kill
even more: perhaps 25m a year. Climate change and habitat loss
may be bigger threats; a recent study found America’s bird popula-
tion had fallen by 30% over the past 50 years. The fact that the ad-
ministration is nonetheless intent on gutting birds’ main legal
protection shows how far it is from honouring its spirit—and the
decades-old bipartisan consensus behind it. A pronounced con-
servative association with bird-watching, and conservation more
broadly, was a feature of that. Prominent Republican birders in-
clude John McCain and Laura Bush. Mr Trump prefers corpora-
tism. The overseer of the mbtarewrite, David Bernhardt, the secre-
tary of the interior, is a former oil-industry lobbyist.Tar and feathers
What of America’s bird-loving millions? If Mr Trump wins re-elec-
tion, they are unlikely to stop his scheme. Like gun control or tax-
ing the rich, conservation is something most voters support, but
not forcefully enough to overcome resistance from a well-funded,
politically favoured lobby. The fact that the FWSis already advising
companies that they can get away with killing birds, accidentally
on purpose, has sparked little protest.
Another question, if the administration gets its way, is what
will become of America’s mass enthusiasm for the beauty and elu-
siveness of birds? It is a culture founded on law, regulation and the
high status that birds have gained from them. If birds are less pro-
tected, that suggests, they may in time be less loved. 7Lexington The other war on migrants
America owes its great love of birds to a century-old law that the administration is attempting to gut