On October 29, 1929, a date best remembered for the infamous Black Tuesday stock market crash, socialite and amateur bird watcher Rosalie Edge attended a meeting of the National Association of Audubon Societies. She was there to ask whether it was true, as a pamphlet had claimed, that the organization supported bounties on bald eagles in Alaska and turning wildlife refuges into shooting grounds.
The men who led the organization were outraged that she brought up the issue. But the pamphlet revealed a truth about conservation at the time: The movement was not as much about saving species as it was about saving only certain species that people liked. And sometimes people only liked those species because they liked to kill them.
The idea of conservation has evolved a lot over the last two centuries, as Michelle Nijhuis documents in her new book, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. It was only in the mid-1700s that Carl Linnaeus began formalizing the idea of species. The recognition that a species could actually go extinct followed soon after. The push to prevent extinctions from happening came in the 1800s, with the realization that species such as the dodo had disappeared forever. Now we know that humans are driving such losses at a rate not seen for millions of years.
The men who led the organization were outraged that she brought up the issue. But the pamphlet revealed a truth about conservation at the time: The movement was not as much about saving species as it was about saving only certain species that people liked. And sometimes people only liked those species because they liked to kill them.
The idea of conservation has evolved a lot over the last two centuries, as Michelle Nijhuis documents in her new book, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction. It was only in the mid-1700s that Carl Linnaeus began formalizing the idea of species. The recognition that a species could actually go extinct followed soon after. The push to prevent extinctions from happening came in the 1800s, with the realization that species such as the dodo had disappeared forever. Now we know that humans are driving such losses at a rate not seen for millions of years.
