EGYPT SAVED THE EGRET.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1921, Page 12

EGYPT SAVED THE EGRET.

THE EGRET SAVED EGYPT’S COTTON FIELDS. BIRD PAID '£2,000,000 FOR ITS LIFE.': (I Egypt has saved her egrets, and the egret is paying magnificently for the privilege of being allowed to live. There is no need to repeat the story of how near these beautiful birds w r ere brought to extinction simply for fashion’s sake, because women, in spite of a thousand warnings and appeals, would insist on having their plumage for a hat. It is an offence to wear an aigrette in Australia, but without the intervention of the law the birds have had friends in private who have watched over their interests, and the result is one of the best stories that haq come to light since the last of the American bison were saved and permitted to form new herds. The Egyptian Zoological Service took action just before it was too late. The birds had been destroyed in colony after colony; they were reduced actually to one little nesting place, and were almost as near extermination as the famous passenger pigeons that have gone for ever. In the. very nick of time, however, guards were placed round the last collection of nests. A few birds were caught and saved for the Egyptian Zoo and then Major S. S. Flower organised a. host of meetings among the natives. Ho , did not preach humanity or kindness; he simply said this to the natives: A worm is destroying your cotton crops. Egrets feed on that worm. The plume-huriters kill the egrets for profit and take the money out of the country. The matter is in your own hands. That was enough; it saved the last nesting-places r 1 ’ the egret—or the buffbacked heron, a& it is called, by naturalists. BIRDS SAVE £2,000,000. From the little collection of fugitives which had found sanctuary at the Cairo Zoo. fifteen young ones were hatched eight years ago. Their descendants were liberated under the care of the watching natives, and, thus protected, those few have now become five thousand. and their numbers are still steadily increasing. The last colony has increased its stock to 200.000, and the egrets have spread far and wide. They have gone back to the nesting grounds from which their ancestors were exterminated by tl ° plume-hunters. Major Flower estimates that each bird is worth £lO a year to the cotton growers of Egypt. The egrets -feed on the cotton worm, and so save the cotton from the insect’s ravages. This year they have saved the Egyptian cultivators a clear £2.000.000. The birds march in extended order across a field and eat the injurious insects as they go, ami without the egrets the worm would multiply in such enormous numbers as totally tn destroy the cotton.

Here, then, we have a lesson in the power of a natural species tri recover under the fostering care of man. and we have. ton. an example of the immense service a bird may render to civilisation. Fashion may groan, and the plumage traders may cry out. but those who desire the prosperity of Egypt, ami who love the birds, will lift up their hearts and rejoice. «