We may imagine that a passion for protecting rare species of animals is peculiar to our times, but by 1916 in the UK, USA and Australia there was great anxiety felt and expressed about creatures being killed for the sake of toffs' fashions.
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By 1916 the plume trade had brought many birds to the brink of extinction. One-hundred years ago this week a Table Talk (Melbourne) columnist was addressing the plume-plundering topic.
"Do you remember how, on the head of that society matron at her daughter's grand wedding, 'the paradise bird [that decorated her hat] went nid-nod-nidding with every word'?
"Perhaps you did so without guessing that such ornaments have only been obtainable of late years from German colonies, of which New Guinea has been one of the most productive – or destructive, which ever way you like to put it. It is many years since the hunting of birds of paradise was forbidden in British New Guinea.
"Now that German New Guinea is in our occupation, the Ornithologist Society asked the Minister for Customs to prevent the slaughter, pointing out that many of the plumes were now coming to Australia.
"Mr Tudor coughed apologetically and explained the international situation, but tried to convey some comfort to the Bird Clubbers by pointing out that the soldiers had been refused new licences to shoot these birds, but the Administrator was only keeping existing licences (held mostly by Germans) in force.
"This looks remarkably like a case of the Government trading with the enemy."
