In this compelling book, Rien Fertel tells the story of humanity's
complicated and often brutal relationship with the brown pelican
over the past century. This beloved bird with the mythically
bottomless belly-to say nothing of its prodigious pouch-has been
deemed a living fossil and the most dinosaur-like of creatures. The
pelican adorns the Louisiana state flag, serves as a religious icon
of sacrifice, and stars in the famous parting shot of Jurassic
Park, but, most significantly, spotlights our tenuous connection
with the environment in which it flies, feeds, and roosts-the
coastal United States. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt inaugurated the
first national wildlife refuge at Pelican Island, Florida, in order
to rescue the brown pelican, among other species, from the plume
trade. Despite such protections, the ubiquity of synthetic "agents
of death," most notably DDT, in the mid-twentieth century sent the
brown pelican to the list of endangered species. By the mid-1960s,
not one viable pelican nest remained in all of Louisiana.
Authorities declared the state bird locally extinct. Conservation
efforts-including an outlandish but well-planned birdnapping-saved
the brown pelican, generating one of the great success stories in
animal preservation. However, the brown pelican is once again under
threat, particularly along Louisiana's coast, due to land loss and
rising seas. For centuries, artists and writers have portrayed the
pelican as a bird that pierces its breast to feed its young,
symbolizing saintly piety. Today, the brown pelican gives itself in
other ways, sacrificed both by and for the environment as a
bellwether bird-an indicator species portending potential disasters
that await. Brown Pelican combines history and first-person
narrative to complicate, deconstruct, and reassemble our vision of
the bird, the natural world, and ourselves.
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