Hi everybody I'm ranger Fiona and I'm here at Kingsley Plantation. Today we're near the site of
the old Fort George hotel in my background we've got some tall trees and vegetation we have green
grass around the landscape and we've got clear blue skies today. I'm wearing a floor-length skirt
a blouse that has long sleeves and a really high neck and I've got a boater hat on top of my head
you won't find many women dressed like this on Fort George island today but if we took a journey
back in time this is almost exactly what the women that were on the island would have been dressed
like. Around the turn of the century entrepreneurs tried to take advantage of the natural beauty and
the warm climate of the island and they tried to turn this into a weekend haven for local elites
and also a refuge for northerners that were trying to escape the cold weather. So all of the
fashionable elites of the time would have been dressed like this when they visited the island
now the neat thing about fashion is that it tells part of a national conservation story
we see history woven into the trends of the time the one thing that might look different
about me if we traveled back in time is my hat if this were 1880 my hat may have had
feathers on on the rim or I might if I had a lot of money and really wanted to impress my friends
I may have an entire taxidermy bird on top of my head. Now this was a time when people became
fascinated with the outside world they viewed nature as something that was integral to your
health so if you were to visit somebody's house they might have a collection of bones, shells,
feathers, they might have big bay windows that let in lots of natural light they may have a plant
collection and this fascination with the outdoor world also translated into fashion which is where
the plumed hat craze came into play. Now the problem with this fascination with plumed hats is
that it exploited and plundered bird populations bird populations across the us but especially
in Florida were absolutely decimated. If you were a plume hunter during this time you were
making a lot of money because at one point plumes were worth more than twice their weight in gold
but this was a bad thing for birds because if you were to walk down a street in any major city at
that time you might see more birds on people's hats than you would have seen in the trees.
In 1888 the Fort George hotel burned down and dreams of turning the island into a booming
tourist economy faded away and around the same time we start to see a national conservation
movement pick up steam people were reading about all of the destruction of native bird populations
and some people were so disturbed that they decided that they would do something about it
and two of these women were Boston socialites named Harriet Hemingway
and Minna B. Hall the two decided that they would host tea parties and when they invited women over
to these tea parties they would encourage them to boycott wearing plumed hats at the same time
they encouraged them to join a society that would advocate for the protection of birds
the two soon established the Massachusetts Audubon society and local state and national organizations
soon followed and this is the same Audubon society that we know and is still active to this day.
In the early 1900s birds began to gain some protection that were there were laws that
were put into place that protected birds you see Theodore Roosevelt establishing the first wildlife
refuge in the united states right here in Florida and states begin to imply employ game wardens
the laws that protected birds were great but if you didn't have anybody there to enforce them
it didn't really mean much because some wild areas in Florida were basically like the wild west
one of these game wardens was employed in south Florida and his name was Guy Bradley while on
the job trying to protect birds Guy Bradley was murdered by two plume hunters so he effectively
lost his life for the cause the two that were accused of murdering him were acquitted of the
charge and this made national headlines and it caused outrage across the country.
Soon after in 1918 you see the introduction of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
and this remains to this day one of the strongest protections for migratory birds luckily for us
we have all of these early conservationists to thank for their work in helping to protect birds
and today Fort George island is protected mostly as park service property
so if you visit the island today you can see a lot of natural birds thriving in their natural habitat
and the neat thing about this story is that this is a conservation story that was started by a few
women organizing tea parties and we see over 400 local chapters of the Audubon Society to this day.