Companies can now get away with killing America’s birds
America owes its great love of its feathered friends to a century-old law that the administration is attempting to gut
ONE AFTERNOON in 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 Americans’ demand for feathery swank, surged in her like a ball of regurgitated feathers and crustaceans from a grebe’s crop. This would prove to be a turning-point in America’s relationship with nature.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The other war on migrants”
United States February 22nd 2020
- Joe Biden’s rivals scramble to capitalise on his woes in South Carolina
- Michael Bloomberg gives an unconvincing performance in Nevada’s Democratic debate
- Why Donald Trump’s high approval ratings may be misleading
- Anger in a time of autism
- The Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy amid child-abuse lawsuits
- A quirk in the law means that America’s kidney shortage costs taxpayers
- Washington DC’s declining black population fights to preserve its musical heritage
- Companies can now get away with killing America’s birds
From the February 22nd 2020 edition
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