The material below was written by Lloyd Kiff, an ornithologist working for
The Peregrine Fund in Idaho. It is in response to a discussion that I
started of the tragedy that all dead eagles that are salvaged are now sent
to the federal repository in Ashland, where their feathers are stockpiled
to be sent to Native American tribes. I have no great objection to this,
but the pressure to acquire these feathers is so great that the president
signed this custom into law, to the extent that museums can't get eagle
specimens at all any more. It seems that religion and ritual take
precedence over science and education (why am I not surprised?). And it's
not only religion/ritual, unfortunately. There is also a flourishing
illegal trade in eagle feathers. I was a witness in a big federal case some
years ago, in which quite a number of Native Americans from all over the NW
were arrested for killing eagles and other raptors in large numbers and
selling their feathers.

Lloyd has had a great deal to do with the California Condor recovery
program, and he is justifiably concerned that the condors that are being
released into the wild will be targets for condor-feather trade. If Indian
tribes can acquire zoo condor feathers legally, then there will be pressure
to acquire them illegally as well, just as has long been the case with
eagle feathers. And there aren't nearly enough condors out there to
withstand such pressures!

Anyone want to write a letter to your congressperson? Actually, at this
point, I doubt if there's much that can be done, short of a mass protest
that just won't happen. Native Americans, at this time, have much more
political clout than museum scientists and educators, and perhaps more than
birdwatchers.

If anyone has a response to this, please cc. me. And Tom Schooley, would
you be willing to forward this to BIRDCHAT? Thanks.

>Hi, friends --
>
> I find this discussion to be most frustrating!
>
> Although The Peregrine Fund has done as much as the next
>organization to save endangered raptors, we can't get permission to
>use a mounted salvaged eagle in our interpretive center, which is visited
>annually by 60,000 people, many of them school children. This is
>because all newly dead eagles must go to the federal depository, where they
>are passed out to "Native Americans" for the commercial trade
>(euphemistically described as "religious purposes"). This is
>utterly ridiculous and not in the public interest.
>
> Furthermore, there is now a program to pass out condor feathers from the zoo
>birds to Native Americans, including members of tribes who were never
>sympatric with the species and who therefore cannot legitimately claim
>even any religious connection to the species. To me, this is like
>spraying a field indiscriminately with a pesticide, despite the lack
>of any obvious problems (= existing demand). If there were not pests
>there formerly, there certainly will be following the spraying, and I
>fear that we will soon see commercialization in condor feathers,
>where there was formerly none.
>
> There is a double standard here, and
>it is promoted by some environmental groups that do not fully
>understand the dimensions or the consequences of the feather trade.
>I am unaware that any organized group, ranging from the Association of
>Systematics Collections to
>Audubon to Earth First!, has spoken out in formal opposition to this
>practice, and it has now been in place long enough to become part of
>our regulatory dogma. If some group has voiced objections, I certainly commend
>them.
>
> I am not convinced that we live in an Age of Reason...
>
> Regards,
>
> Lloyd Kiff

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html