In June 1895, state representatives and scientific experts from more than a dozen countries met in Paris to discuss the establishment of an international legal agreement for the protection of migratory birds. Many participants knew each other from previous encounters, in particular the meetings of the International Ornithological Congress, which had prepared the conference. The delegates were unanimously in favor of protection, but no agreement existed on the question of how many species should be protected, in which way they should be protected, and for what reason. Agreement was so difficult to find that several previous declarations and drafts of a law had already come to nothing.
The consideration that eventually won the day was the question of the usefulness or harmfulness of different bird species to agriculture in the major grain producing regions on the European continent. Birds devouring insect pests were considered useful, while those feeding on grain were considered harmful. The debate at the Congress resulted in the International Convention for the Protection of Birds of 19 March 1902, which was signed by the governments of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Monaco, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. It provided absolute protection for the birds, their nests, eggs, and young enumerated in a schedule of useful species that accompanied the Convention, and named certain noxious birds, which were exempt from protection, in a second [Boardman Reference Boardman1981; Boardman Reference Boardman2006; Herman Reference Herman1907].
The Convention resonated with some countries, but not with others. Germany was one of the driving forces in the negotiation process and found the Convention in principle to be in agreement with the German Imperial Law for the Protection of Birds established in 1888. Both the International Convention and the Imperial Law were based on economic principles. The major provision of the latter was a general close season from 1 March to 15 September, together with a schedule of noxious bird species that were excluded from protection and could be hunted and procured all year round. The law was slightly revised by the Imperial Law for the Protection of Birds of 1908 but remained intact in its general principles. In addition, the German States were granted the right to pass and retain legislation that went beyond the national provisions [Barthelmeß Reference Barthelmeß1981; Schmoll Reference Schmoll2004; Zwanzig Reference Zwanzig1988].
Other countries had more difficulty than Germany in aligning their national legislation with the International Convention. Present at the initial congress but notably absent from the signatories were Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Russia. Britain, for its part, was one of the countries in Europe with the most elaborate legislation on the topic. Yet the British law on bird protection differed substantially from the law in most countries on the continent, with the law of the German Empire as the most salient example, even though it used largely the same legal instruments. The Wild Birds Protection Act of 1880 established a close season for all birds from 1 March to 1 August and listed species to be protected all year. A revision in 1894 added nest and eggs to the list and, in 1896, secretaries of state were given the right to create additional schedules for specific counties [Bonhomme Reference Bonhomme2005; Burton and Scott 1906; Evans Reference Evans1997; Marchant and Watkins Reference Marchant and Watkins1897; Sheail Reference Sheail1976]. Yet the motivation behind the protection of birds in the British Acts was the complete opposite of that in the German Imperial Law. Instead of looking at the effects of birdlife on agriculture and forestry, it focused predominantly on rarity.
The contrast was noted by Otto Herman, a Hungarian ornithologist who authored a report on the International Convention for the Protection of Birds. In his view, the British law on bird protection stood in stark contrast to law on the continent, in particular to the German one.
We look in vain in this schedule for those species on the protection of which the continental states laid the greatest stress; to mention only a few; swallows and swift, blue-throat, redbreast, wheatear, accentor, warblers (of this genus only the nightingale is protected), grasshopper warbler, fly-catchers, wagtails, wren, gold-crested and fire-crested wren,—all are missing from the British schedule. On the other hand the schedule includes species which, in continental conception, are among the greatest foes of fishing: to mention only a few; the merganser, smew, diver, grebe, not to speak of the bonxie etc. [Herman Reference Herman1907: 172].
The British law protected the very species on its list that the German Imperial Law had singled out as noxious, not because they were considered beneficial on the Isles, but because no attention was paid to criteria of utility or harm to begin with. The British Wild Birds Protection Acts instead protected species that were considered rare.
The ecology of mind and the experience of nature
The international law for the protection of birds was, as the differences in national legislation indicate, not only a reflection of environmental changes and their accompanying problems, such as the decline of certain bird populations. What counted as an environmental “problem” and what was advanced as a “solution” was last a social phenomenon. As the debate on the international law for the protection of birds shows, British and German ornithologists responded in substantially different ways to the same environmental changes, depending on whether birds were valued for economic, moral, or aesthetic reasons. The ways in which these categories related to each other likewise differed. The observation that the meaning given to nature and the categories used to classify the world around us are social phenomena has a long tradition in sociology. One of the seminal authors of the discipline, Émile Durkheim, made the argument a point of departure for his sociology of morality. In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Durkheim argued that the collective experience of religious ritual gives rise to totemic symbols that signify the social group [Durkheim 1995 [1912]]. More than just providing collective symbols and an affiliated set of prohibitions and codes of conduct, this collective experience also forms what he called the categories of the mind. According to Durkheim, not just the distinction between the sacred and the profane, but all categories of the mind, including the categories of time, space, etc. are the outcome of group experiences produced by collective rituals. He thus ventured far beyond the sociology of morality and provided an ambitious sociology of knowledge as the second theme of his book. This sociology of knowledge was intended to account for the existence of different architectonics of the mind, to use John Levi Martin's expression discussed in the introduction to this special issue [Martin Reference Martin2017]
While this article follows Durkheim in his argument that the way in which such evaluative categories as economic utility, moral duty, and aesthetic enjoyment are conceived and related to each is not determined by human nature, but grounded in experience, it departs from his claim that this experience is an exclusively social phenomenon. Instead, the article argues that the experience of nature and the material world is part of this process of category formation. It shows how the value attributed to birds, whether moral, economic, or aesthetic, was produced by the status of birds in people’s experience. This experience, in turn, was formed through people’s interaction with and transformation of the natural environment.
In order to have a name for this argument, one can contrast Durkheim’s sociology of morality with Gregory Bateson’s program for an ecology of mind. The notion of the ecology of mind was introduced by Bateson as a composite title for his work on mental processes in relation to their social and natural environment. He identified this ecology as a new way of thinking and referred to it as “a science which does not yet exist as an organized body of theory or knowledge” [Bateson Reference Bateson1972: xv]. The notion stood as much for a program to be carried out in the future as for the overarching theme of his own research already conducted. The assessment of the absence of a well articulated theory at the time was a fair one. As many readers have pointed out, Bateson himself did not do much to fill the metaphor with precise content.
Almost 50 years later we are in a better position to fill do this. This article draws on recent developments in science and technology studies (STS) to show how the interaction between people and the man-made environment formed the categories of valuation that found an expression in international legislation. Scholarship in this field is a central point of reference for what has recently been identified as a material turn in the social sciences [Mukerji Reference Mukerji2015]. Of particular relevance is the conceptual vocabulary developed by actor network theorists such as Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law [Callon Reference Callon, Bijker, Law, Hughes Wiebe Bijker and Pinch1987; Reference Callon and Law1986; Latour Reference Latour1987; Reference Latour, Bijker and Law1992; Reference Latour2005; Law Reference Law, Bijker, Hughes and Pinch1987; Reference Law1992]. In marked contrast to Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge that purposefully restricts the account of causal factors involved in the production of knowledge to social facts, this work looks at how material objects, technology, and space are not merely neutral instruments in the production of scientific knowledge, but actively shape this process and influence its outcome. (On the contrast between Durkheimian sociology and actor network theory see in particular Latour Reference Latour2005.) Both subjects, i.e. scientists, and objects (the instruments they use), are actors or actants in the process of knowledge production. This interaction of multiple factors in scientific research is conceptually captured by the notion of assemblage. The central argument is that assemblages are hybrids between society and technology. Scientific knowledge emerges over time in an interactive process that Sheila Jasanoff has termed co-production [Jasanoff Reference Jasanoff2004].
Actor network theory has by now ventured well beyond the confines of the study of laboratories in which it was initially developed: formal gardens [Mukerji Reference Mukerji1994], art museums [Griswold, Mangione and McDonnell Reference Griswold, Mangione and McDonnell2013], financial markets [Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger Reference Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger2002; Knorr-Cetina and Grimpe Reference Knorr-Cetina, Grimpe, Pinch and Swedberg2008] and trading rooms [Beunza and Stark Reference Beunza and Stark2004] are among the more recent fields of application. Most relevant for this article is research that applies these conceptual tools to the natural environment. From the perspective of actor network theory, the environment is not merely an empty canvas on which actors project their creative visions, but it is actively shaping perceptions and knowledge production. Nature is an actant in an assemblage, and itself transformed in the process. Mark Fiege [Fiege Reference Fiege1999] has addressed the result of these transformative interactions as hybrid landscapes, Donna Haraway [Haraway Reference Haraway2003] as naturecultures, and Sara Pritchard [Pritchard Reference Pritchard2011] as the envirotechnical. These notions are useful in focusing our attention on the fact that the natural environment is not merely transformed by man, but in turn also actively shaping social processes. They highlight that the boundary between landscape and labscape, to use Robert Kohler’s expression, is conceptually meaningless [Kohler Reference Kohler2002].
This article builds on these recent developments to show how the interaction between the natural environment and society produces human subjectivity. It does not look at the production of scientific knowledge about nature in isolation, but extends the perspective of actor network theory to analyze how knowledge production about nature shapes the categories used to evaluate the natural environment. The article argues that the meaning of economic, aesthetic, and moral standards of valuation and the relation between them is a product of people’s interaction with the environment. These valuations in turn shape how the natural world is transformed. They are part of a relational process of co-production, forming an ecology of mind, to use Bateson’s metaphor.
Three different valuations of birds were central to this ecology: the economic utility of birds in agriculture, a moral concern about the integrity of nature, and the enjoyment derived from watching, catching, and studying birds. They formed the main reasons for the legal protection of wild birds advanced in turn of the century Britain and Germany. All of these three considerations were present in each country, yet what nevertheless varied was the frequency in which they could be found and the way they were related to each other. In Britain, this relationship was pluralistic, not in the sense that it precluded a comparison of presumably incommensurable values, but rather in the sense of allowing for a balancing act between independently valid valuations. In Germany, by contrast, the relationship was monistic, resulting in the effort to locate values in a hierarchy. Values lower down the hierarchy were denied any independent validity at all or were interpreted to be subservient to those values higher up the scale, that is, valid only insofar as they did either promote or at least not interfere with the primary value.
This relationship between values derived from the position of people in relation to the environment. Legislation on wild birds did not merely shape the natural environment, but this environment itself shaped people’s valuations of it. The bird species addressed by these valuations were largely the same and, since bird migration was a central topic, in some cases it were even the same individual birds whose protection was discussed. What differed, more than anything else, was the status of birds within agriculture. In Germany, agriculture was a central element of the national economy. Despite a burgeoning process of industrialization in the second half of the 19th century, a substantial amount of the population remained rural [Wehler 2008]. The scope of agricultural production increased throughout the period and was the main reason for a decline in the songbird population.
Much of the importance attributed to agriculture in the German Empire was due to import restrictions on cheap grain available on the international market. These restrictions created a situation in which agriculture was heavily industrialized and the backbone of the national economy. Previous generations of scholars have addressed this prevalence of the primary sector under conditions of industrial capitalism as the “coalition of rye and iron,” and presented it as the linchpin of a German “Sonderweg” [Torp Reference Torp2010]. Much of this special status attributed to Germany derived from the assumption that British history describes the general rule for the development of modern societies. To the extent that legislation on the conservation of nature is part of modern political institutions, this article suggests that the very opposite was the case. The German approach to the topic is representative for most of continental Europe, while the British experience stands out as an exception.
Yet neither the rule nor the exception in this comparison was the expression of an enduring cultural pattern. The valuation of birds expressed in the national legislation described above was a reflection of the position of each country in the international market for grain. The difference in position was most pronounced in the time from the mid 1870s until the beginning of World War I, after shipping and rail networks had improved and cheap grain from the American Midwest was available on the European market. Britain was the first industrial nation in the world whose economy was based on the import of natural resource and export of industrial products. By the middle of the 19th century, more grain was imported from abroad than produced at home [Grigg Reference Grigg1989].
Throughout the time from 1870 to 1895, the years marking the beginning of discussions on the international protection of birds and the eventual drafting of the law, the area used for growing cereal declined by 22.5 percent in Britain, while it rose by 6 percent in Germany. Imports of corn in Germany stood at 3.8 million metric tons at the end of this period, compared to 7.9 million tons in Britain, with a population roughly two-thirds the size of that in the former country [Mitchell Reference Mitchell2013]. Thus, in contrast to Germany, agriculture was not a main cause of species decline in Britain. The removal of import barriers in 1846 through the repeal of the corn law did not only result in declining amounts of land used for agriculture, but at times also made licensing the land for hunting more lucrative than farming. Sport shooting, not agriculture, was accordingly a main cause of species decline [Shrubb Reference Shrubb2003]. Changing agricultural practices did arguably even benefit bird populations, since the enclosure movement that enabled the industrial revolution resulted in the planting of hedgerows on a large scale, which in turn provided new habitats for birds [Rackham Reference Rackham1986]. In Germany, by contrast, farming became more industrialized throughout the same period, resulting in the removal of landscape features such as hedgerows.
The significance of these changes in agriculture was twofold: first, the divergent trajectory of land use practices determined whether certain bird populations would either flourish or decline; second, and even more decisively, it did not only produce different problems waiting for different solutions, but it also shaped the very valuations that determined what was perceived as a problem in the first place. The divergent trajectories of agriculture in late 19th and early 20th century Britain and Germany caused a qualitative difference in the way birds were experienced. It determined whether birds were predominantly experienced in the realm of leisure activities, i.e. play, or within the realm of economic practices, i.e. work. The trajectory of agriculture turned the landscape in Britain into a playground and that in Germany into a shop floor. (For a more detailed account of the significance of the concepts of work and play for the sociology of morality see Bargheer [Reference Bargheer2018].)
These differences in the experience of birds shaped how they were evaluated and how different valuations were related to each other: conservationists in Britain experienced birds in the practice of natural history collecting. As collectors, they valued the rarity of particular bird species and the diversity of birdlife as a whole, while the utility of birds in agriculture mattered little to nothing. Although agriculturalists in Britain certainly paid attention to the topic of the economic utility of birds, this valuation was entirely remote to ornithologists, who were first and foremost bird collectors. Being collectors, they found themselves in opposition to those who used birds as live targets in sport shooting and diminished bird populations in the process without any benefit for ornithology. The opposite was the case in Germany. Not only was sport shooting, unlike in Britain, not a major reason for species decline, but ornithologists themselves did not encounter birds as part of their leisure activities. The predominant experience of birdlife was embedded in the world of work. Birds were valued according to the utility or harm that they provided in agriculture. What mattered was not rarity and diversity, but utility and abundance. The very question of which species should count as useful and which as harmful was a major preoccupation of German ornithologists that did not find an equivalent in Britain. This economic point of view did not prevent all German ornithologists from developing emotional attachments to bird species that were considered harmful, yet it left them without an argument for their protection. Harmful species were not only unprotected, but purposefully decimated and destroyed in the name of economic bird protection.
In Britain, the economic value of birds was one category among others that could be exchanged against or counterbalanced with other benefits that derive from birds, including first of all the pleasure that derives from watching, catching, and studying them. Leisure actives, rather than economic practices, had at least equal if not greater significance in shaping the valuation of birds. In Germany, no such subordination of economic values to the simple enjoyment of birds was possible. The value of birds for agriculture was imperative for the national economy and could not be exchanged against other values. The enjoyment of birds as hobby or sport was no match to economic imperatives. “You don’t play with food” is one of the commonplaces of table manners in Germany and many other places. It captures the macro-historical constellation surprisingly well—the enjoyment that derives from the experience of nature does not substitute for its importance as a source of nourishment, or its role in the production of such.
To counter the imperative of economic arguments it was necessary to mobilize a justification that was equally imperative. Deontological moral categories of the “thou shalt not” variety fit the bill. Even conservationists who reported deriving enjoyment from the experience of birdlife mobilized this argument to counter economic considerations. What resulted was a stark dualism between economic and moral valuations at the exclusion of enjoyment as an independent argument. The relation between these categories of the mind was thus shaped by the interaction with the real world. It is a form of practice turned inward, that is, a way of acting in the world and experiencing the world that forms a way of thinking. It was the very difference between these experiences that came to the fore during the debates on the international protection of wild birds.
The protection of wild birds in Germany
The initiative for international legislation on the protection of birds derived from a convention of German farmers in 1868 and was subsequently advanced at the meetings of the International Ornithological Congress. The debates at these meetings highlighted the differences in approach. It was not merely that agreement was lacking between different interest groups, such as farmers, foresters, fishers, fruit-growers etc., but that the ornithologists themselves were divided in opinion. At the second meeting of the Congress at Budapest in 1894, Karl Theodor Liebe and Georg Jacobi von Wangelin tried to address these differences with a review of the existing laws across Europe. The first author was the head of the Congress’s section on economic ornithology and a vice-president of the German Society for the Protection of Birdlife (Deutsche Verein zum Schutz der Vogelwelt) [Marwinski Reference Marwinski2004]. After assessing the legal status quo in 17 states, Liebe came to the conclusion that economic arguments for protection dominated. He was one of the leading voices in his home country against the dominance of economic considerations and used the opportunity to pronounce his own position:
We call nature our mother and show her our veneration and love. From this derives the duty to protect the nature surrounding us in its integrity, in as absolute inviolacy as possible, as far as the persistent struggle for survival of our culture allows it. We should not wantonly, disruptively, and destructively intervene into nature: we do not only have no right to do so, but we also violate a duty to preserve nature. Nature in its total appearance is the embodiment of beauty […] [and] we are not allowed to wantonly mutilate beauty” [Liebe and Wangelin Reference Liebe, Wangelin and Hennicke1893: 133].
Liebe was of the opinion that economic considerations, while not irrelevant, should not be the basis of bird protection. They were merely subservient or contributing motives, as he emphasized. Human beings had a right to intervene in the balance of nature for their own survival, and to subsequently correct the resulting increase of some species and the decrease of others, yet nothing more. Liebe did thus not merely draw a sharp boundary between economic and ethical considerations, but also formulated a hierarchy of these values. Ethical imperatives provided the framework in which economic goals could be pursued.
Liebe considered changes in agriculture and forestry to be the major causes of the decline in birdlife. A close time was simply intended to reduce additional pressure on bird populations. Since habitat changes were perceived to be the major cause of the problem, conservationists in Germany tried to alleviate this ill through the distribution of artificial nest boxes and the provision of bird food in winter. Bird protection organizations such as the German Society for the Protection of Birdlife, had the declared aim of popularizing the practice. While it was then the most influential society in the country specifically identifying with the task, it was part of a long list of 137 natural history societies that had been founded in Germany between 1800 and 1879, many of which listed nature conservation and bird protection among their aims [Daum Reference Daum1998]. Natural history societies further monitored population changes in birds. Liebe, for instance, was able to express in numbers the perceived changes among 146 species that he had observed in his native state of East-Thuringia throughout the middle of the 19th century. He noted the increase of some songbirds and the decline of others alongside the local extinction of five species of birds of prey and wildfowl [Liebe Reference Liebe1878].
Scientific knowledge about such population changes was reflected in the German Imperial Law for the Protection of Birds enacted in 1888. The main goal of the law was the protection of bird populations useful to agriculture. It prohibited various methods of fowling, and restricted the trapping and trading of small birds which were not regulated by the game law by means of a close time from 1 March to 15 September [Zwanzig Reference Zwanzig1988]. A number of species excluded from protection were listed in a separate schedule of noxious species, i.e. those considered harmful to agriculture. Included in this schedule were not only the house sparrow and the tree sparrow, then considered the main foes of the farmer, but also most birds of prey, since they diminished the population of beneficial songbirds. Hunters moreover considered this taxonomic group as detrimental to game keeping.
The fact that there had never been a unified law applicable to the entire country made international negotiations considerably more difficult. The different regulations on the issue at the state level were in some cases also rather dated, going back as far as 1777 in the case of Lippe-Detmold. It was the more recent legislation that reflected a major change in the economic status of birds. Up until the middle of the 19th century, the most viable economic contribution of songbirds was as a source of food. This changed in the second half of the century, when their importance for agriculture became more and more apparent. Birds changed from units of consumption to units of production. In the case of Prussia, the bird conservation decrees of Berlin and the district councils of Potsdam and Frankfurt from 1867 marked the turning point. In Berlin and the Potsdam district, and in the Frankfurt district, 34 bird species and some 37 bird species respectively, were protected all year round and banned from the weekly markets. The decrees show that the conservation of insect-eating birds, which were regarded as beneficial to agriculture and forestry were considered more important than the economic interests associated with the trade of songbirds for nourishment purposes [Klose Reference Klose, Markussen and Garrelts2005].
Yet not all bird catching for food was successfully outlawed either in the individual States or the Empire as a whole. Still unprotected by the Imperial Law of 1888 were the so-called “Krammetsvögel,” the traditional German name for fieldfares. In practice, this was often used as a catch-all term in the most literal sense for several species of thrushes, which formed part of traditional diets in many parts of the country. This group of species remained classified as game and thus regulated by the game law, which did not establish a close time for them. The number of fieldfares brought to market was substantial, highlighting the fact that it was indeed the use of birds as food that had an impact on their diminishing numbers. According to the statistics available for Prussia that were reported during the parliamentary discussion on the Imperial Law, thrushes (including fieldfares) were the second largest part of the annual hunting bag between April 1885 and March 1886. The count stood at 1,295,702 individuals, compared to 270,071 ducks, 139,628 pheasants, 102,839 quail, 52,011 snipes, and 41,299 woodcocks. Among birds, the count of thrushes was exceeded only by the 2,521,868 partridges on the list [Schmoll Reference Schmoll2004].
One of the leading voices for the inclusion of fieldfares under the bird protection law both in his home country and at the International Ornithological Congress was Baron Hans von Berlepsch. At the meeting in Budapest he was represented with a paper on “Bird catching in the South” and he also used subsequent international meetings as an arena to spur efforts at home. In his view the exclusion of fieldfares from protection served as an embarrassing reminder that bird catching for food, which at the international meetings tended to be largely blamed on countries in the south of Europe––first and foremost Italy––was not an entirely outdated practice in Germany or other Northern European countries either. In order to convince other countries to pass legislation against the killing of migratory songbirds, it was necessary to provide a good example, as he declared at the Congress meeting in Paris in 1900.
How can we accuse other nations, in particular the Mediterranean ones, of catching our birds, or even try to prohibit it, as long as we ourselves are in the same way destroying those birds that come to us from the North to seek our hospitality through the snare-catching of fieldfares [Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1901: 339].
Bird conservationists such as Berlepsch accordingly did not merely try to impose their own national legislation on other countries; they also tried to use the international negotiations to facilitate developments at home.
Berlepsch’s reason for rallying for the protection of fieldfares was their utility in agriculture. He was one of the main promoters in Germany of nest boxes and bird feeders as tools for increasing the population of songbirds that had been diminished through the transformation of agriculture. Berlepsch took substantial pride in the fact that it was he who had turned the enterprise of providing artificial shelter for wild birds into a real science––or so at least he declared in his treatise The Complete Book of Bird Protection (“Der gesamte Vogelschutz”) that was first published in 1899 and went through 12 continuously enlarged and revised editions until 1929 [Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1899; Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1929]. In the early years of the 20th century Berlepsch was the undisputed household name in the field of economic ornithology, or “rational bird protection” [Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1929: 57], as he called it.
The task of rational bird protection was everything but to be belittled. The Baron put special emphasis on the fact that he considered it to be a scientific means to an economic end and not a hobby, sport, game, or any other kind of amusement.
Bird protection is not simply a hobby, a passion derived from ethical or aesthetic motives—that is, not simply derived from the admiration for the song of birds, from the effort to beautify and rejuvenate nature—but bird protection is first of all simply an economic matter, a matter of eminent importance. Bird protection is a matter from which derives for human beings a material, a huge pecuniary benefit [Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1899: 1-2].
Following this principle, Berlepsch endorsed the proposal for a German bird protection law that was supposed to implement the international law drafted in 1895. It contained separate schedules for useful and harmful species and was thus in principle fully in accordance with the existing national law. The house and tree sparrow topped his list of harmful species, and Berlepsch declared to have waged a “war of extermination” [Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1899: 78] against sparrows at his private estate over the decades. While total extermination of the species was not directly propagated, it was also not explicitly argued against, since he deemed it impossible to achieve. “Thus people do not have to have scruples to wage war against the sparrows, since we will unfortunately not run out of them” [Berlepsch Reference Berlepsch1899: 81].
The argument for protection advanced by Berlepsch was thus the exact opposite of the one put forward by Liebe. Both made a sharp distinction between economic and ethical considerations, but they gave different priorities to them. In practical terms, however, this disagreement over the underlying principle of bird protection did not always make a difference. Both agreed, for instance, that sparrow populations should be reduced to benefit agriculture. Their opinions did, however, diverge when it came to birds of prey. The vast majority of German ornithologists and bird protectionists, Liebe and Berlepsch included, agreed that, with only a few exceptions, the entire taxonomic group was to be considered harmful. Yet, unlike other birds to which the label of harm was attached, birds of prey were naturally represented by much smaller populations than songbirds, and were often in rapid decline due to persecution by game keepers and changes in agriculture and forestry. It was when it came to species considered harmful but rare that the disagreement about principles also made a practical difference. For economic reasons Berlepsch wanted to see birds of prey on the schedule of unprotected species, while Liebe argued on ethical grounds that rare species should be protected.
On this point it was Berlepsch who was more in tune with the existing laws in the German Empire and most others countries in continental Europe. Neither the German Imperial Law of 1888 nor the International Convention provided protection on grounds of rarity. Even those birds of prey that were without any doubt in decline, such as the peregrine falcon, were put on the list of harmful species and thus explicitly excluded from protection. The extermination of harmful species was in many cases a sought after goal. Following the exemple of the brown bear, the grey wolf, and the Eurasian lynx, which had been eradicated on most of the continent by the 19th century, it was hoped that many birds of prey would join their fate, in some cases with success. Local state officials, for instance, awarded money for the capture of the bearded vulture, the largest bird of prey on the continent. The last individuals were reportedly captured in 1886 in Switzerland, 1906 in Austria, and 1913 in Italy (Génsbol and Thiede Reference Génsbol and Thiede2004; Hofrichter Reference Hofrichter2005). Rarity did not per se exclude a species from persecution, not even among bird protectionists. There were of course exceptions to this attitude. In the parliamentary debate on the update of the 1888 law, Baron Ferdinand von Wolff-Metternich, for instance, argued that rarity should make a species exempt from persecution:
Sadly, it is true that some marvelous bird species are more and more in danger of disappearing in Germany due to the direct intervention of man. Examples are the white-tailed eagle, the osprey, the bustard, the black stork etc. Their aeries get plundered and the beautiful magnificent animals senselessly shot down. In consideration of their rarity one should gladly tolerate the minor damage that some individuals are possibly causing [Vogelwelt 1908: 135].
The argument did not carry the day. Like its predecessor, the Imperial Law for the Protection of Birds of 1908 was predominantly based on economic considerations. The major change was a prohibition of snare-catching, which was the most efficient method of trapping fieldfares. The prohibition of snares resulted in almost cessation of fieldfare trapping, and was reportedly an effective means of conservation [Klose Reference Klose, Markussen and Garrelts2005].
The status of birds of prey in Germany drives home the point that it was not environmental change as such that led to pleas for environmental protection. The answer to the question as to which environmental condition is perceived as an environmental problem is a social phenomenon. Yet this social phenomenon was not separate from the natural world. “Society” and “environment” were in this case not two mutually exclusive phenomena or realms of experience, but part of the same assemblage that gave rise to a peculiar ecology of mind. The fact that there was nothing inevitable about the way environmental problems were perceived becomes even more apparent if one compares the valuation of birds in the world of work that dominated in Germany with the contrasting British case in which the experience of birds was part of the world of play.
The protection of wild birds in Britain
The focus of the British Wild Birds Protection Act of 1880 was on rarity. Birds of prey such as the peregrine falcon could accordingly be found on the schedule of protected species. In contrast, however, many songbirds that in Germany were deemed useful to agriculture were missing. The point was not lost on contemporaries. “The Schedule horrifies some of our neighbours on the Continent”, wrote Arthur MacPherson in a prize-winning essay on comparative legislation on wild birds. “The Schedule to the Act of 1880 seems in fact to include chiefly the larger birds, which are the more likely to be inferred with; the numerous species of small insectivorous birds being omitted” [MacPherson and Momber 1909: 31-32]. This, he argued, was partly due to the fact that they were not perceived to be in decline, but also because the importance of birds for agriculture did not receive much attention to begin with. He even doubted whether the economic side of the question had been considered at all during the legislative process.
British legislation on the protection of birds was, moreover, not a response to changes in agriculture, but changes in hunting practices. The Game Act of 1831 had removed property qualifications and replaced them with a system of certification. Anyone with the necessary means could now purchase a certificate permitting them to kill game. In effect it restored the common law principle that the right to kill game rested with the occupier of the land on which it was found. Together with the availability of cheap grain on the international market the Game Act had the effect that in the late 19th century a fine shooting estate was often better business than an investment in agriculture. To accommodate a rising number of hunters, many landowners engaged in rearing game birds. Since demand was higher than what nature could provide, eggs were sometimes even imported from abroad for hatching [Griffin Reference Griffin2007]. Another consequence of the new law was the influx of weekend shooters into the countryside. The practice was particularly pronounced at Flamborough Head, an 8-mile cliff along the Yorkshire coast, that was frequented by visitors who came with the intention to shoot seabirds for sport [Allen Reference Allen1994; Sheail Reference Sheail1976].
Sport shooting was particularly frowned upon by natural historians who collected birds for the museum. Charles Waterton was among the collectors who lamented the practice in his Essay on Natural History soon after the passage of the Game Act: “No profit attends the carnage; the poor unfortunate birds serve merely as marks to aim at, and they are generally left where they fall” [Waterton Reference Waterton1838: 159]. Natural historians who mobilized against the practice received support from local fishermen, farmers, landowners, and several members of parliament, eventually leading to the establishment of the Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1869 that secured a close time from 1 April to 1 August for 33 species of seabirds. The scope of this law was enlarged by the Wild Birds Protection Act of 1872, the Wild Fowl Protection Act of 1876, and the Wild Birds Protection Act of 1880. The latter was the most far-reaching in scope, incorporating all previous acts and repeatedly referred to as the “Magna Charta of British Birds” [Pigott 1907: 599]. Its distinguishing feature, compared to the legislation of the continent that relied on schedules of harmful and useful species, was the provision of a close season for all bird species. It subsequently provided the background for the negotiations at the International Ornithological Congresses and is the reason why common ground was so difficult to find. The law was amended by the Wild Birds Protection Acts of 1902, 1904, and 1908 until it became part of a more comprehensive Protection of Birds Act in 1925. The principle of providing protection for all species remained in force throughout the entire period [Evans Reference Evans1997; Sheail Reference Sheail1976].
One of the most vocal natural historians in Britain on the topic of bird conservation was Alfred Newton, a professor of zoology at the University of Cambridge and a founding member of the British Ornithologists’ Union. With an eye on the events at Flamborough Head, Newton gave an influential lecture at the 1868 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science where he argued that the extinction of bird species was an imminent threat. Recent losses of species previously found on the British Isles included not only local extinctions, but also the Great Auk, a penguin-like flightless bird that became globally extinct in the first half of the 19th century [Gaskell Reference Gaskell2000; Newton Reference Newton1865]. Newton was one of the main chroniclers of the decline of the species and he was uneasy with the then widespread opinion that extinction was an inevitable by-product of human progress. “[If] the progress of civilization unconsciously demands some few victims, we should abstain from willfully adding to their number” [Newton 1869: 108]. The following year, the British Association established a committee for the purpose of assessing the practicability of establishing a close time for the protection of indigenous animals. This Committee comprised many pre-eminent naturalists, among them Alfred Newton, and was involved in the passage of the 1880 Wild Birds Protection Act [Cowles Reference Cowles2013]. In Newton’s view, the act marked a historical turning point for the precise reason that it was not motivated by economic considerations.
Among the various “movements” which have arisen within the last thirty years, there is one which to our forefathers would have indeed seemed passing strange […] To them the rook was a robber of grain; the kite, the curse of the henwife; the jay and the pie were notorious pilferers [Newton 1881: 100-101].
Examples of the latter point of view are abundant. An act of parliament in 1533, for instance, required parishes to equip themselves with nets in which to catch birds. Many parishes continued to make payments under this and later acts until the 19th century for the benefit of agriculture [Thomas Reference Thomas1983]. Moreover, up until the beginning of the century there existed so-called sparrow clubs that were organized in order to decimate the species [Jones Reference Jones1972; Summers-Smith 1963]. As such the situation was not so different from that on the continent. A major change only took place during the 19th century. Even the debate on the 1869 Sea Birds Preservation Act still reflected the concern of local farmers who saw the birds contributing to the protection of crops. Yet such economic considerations were indeed absent from subsequent legislation, most notably the 1880 Act that repealed all previous laws.
Economic considerations were of no personal relevance for Newton, which is among the reasons why he assumed that the law marked a seminal historical moment. In his view species should be granted protection solely on grounds of rarity and the danger of extinction. It was his sensibility as a natural history collector that motivated the argument, and he shared that sensibility with many others. Throughout the British Isles, natural history societies and field clubs had been founded from the 1820s onwards, and their number grew steadily throughout the century. In 1873, a survey disclosed that there were at least 169 local scientific societies in Great Britain and Ireland, of which 104 professed to be field clubs. Most of the latter had come into being since 1850 [Abbott Reference Abbott1896]. Natural history collecting as organized by these clubs was among the major causes of extinction, since the study of the natural world was to a large extent, as one reviewer pointed out, driven by a friendly competition between clubs. “In the case of rare species existing only in a very limited area, one can scarcely imagine a better device to ensure their speedy extermination” [Brady Reference Brady1867: 109]. It should thus come as little surprise that bird collectors were acutely aware of the phenomenon of extinction.
While natural history collectors contributed to extinction, they were also among the leading voices for the regulation of the practice. The Wild Birds Protection Acts had among their main purposes to keep both sport shooters and natural history collectors at bay. Since collectors targeted rare species, the laws had to make a declared effort to protect them. The point was made at length in an article on extermination in Newton’s Dictionary of Birds, a publication that was based on a series of articles written for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Newton bemoaned in particular the decline of birds of prey and wildfowl. “The change is, of course, not satisfactory to the naturalist or to the lover of wild scenery.” He saw it as the task of legislation to “preserve to our posterity the most pleasing features of many a landscape and the grateful opportunities of studying many a curious and interesting species” [Newton 1893-1896: 227]. Neither an economic nor an ethical value was attached to the pursuit of bird protection—the sole reason given was the enjoyment of birds by the curious naturalist and the lover of wildlife.
Newton was not alone in this assessment. A sense of enjoyment of or passion for wild birds was the main reason for conservation put forward by British conservationists. This argument stood out in the international debate on the topic at the fourth International Ornithological Congress hosted in London in 1905, three years after the International Convention was adopted by eight countries, albeit not by Britain. The occasion was used to provide a review of the existing legislation in Britain and the Commonwealth. An additional presentation on the rationale of bird conservation was provided by Frank Lemon, a secretary of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the seminal bird conservation organization in Britain. While he recognized utility, beauty, and rarity as the main reasons for conservation put forward by conservationists at the congress, it was a passion for natural history collecting that in his view mattered most. “To understand and know about a living creature as a rule begets a love for it, and to love anything is to wish for its preservation.” Lemon hoped that the exchange of ideas at the congress would “promote the desire to hand down to future generations the world of wild nature at least as complete and as rich as we found it” [Lemon 1907: 619]. The disposition was that of a natural history collector who takes pleasure in a diverse range of collectibles.
This is not to say that economic considerations were entirely unknown to British ornithologists or the Wild Birds Protection Acts. The 1880 Act did leave it to the landowners to persecute species not listed on the schedule. Beginning with the 1896 Act, exceptions to the law could also be enacted at the county level. The list of protected species and the length of the close seasons could be extended beyond what was nationally prescribed and, in rare cases, after special application, could also be temporarily reduced [Marchant and Watkins Reference Marchant and Watkins1897; Masefield Reference Masefield1897]. British legislation was thus not entirely mute on the point of accommodating economic interests, but it turned this consideration into an exception to the rule, rather than using it as the organizing principle as in the case of the German Imperial Law. The main difference between the two was that the British approach was pluralistic, while the German one was monistic. British ornithologists did not merely put more emphasis on the enjoyment of nature; even more importantly, they did not consider the different reasons for conservation to be mutually exclusive.
According to the prevailing view in Britain, different reasons for conservation could be balanced against each other. Commenting on the British Wild Birds Protection Acts, Gustavus Momber, for instance, argued that
Sometimes a little rough must be taken with the smooth. Agriculturalists would not banish the sun because at times the crops are scorched, nor the rain because floods have brought disaster. There has been, in the past, too great a readiness to take hasty reprisals against birds which, though at times useful, do on occasion work harm, or, as often happens, are thought to work harm. Song and beauty and counterbalancing good should be taken into account in judging [MacPherson and Momber 1909: 64].
Such a counterbalancing approach did not resonate much with German ornithologists. The latter recognized a multiplicity of justifications, but this did not result in a call for adjudication or counterbalancing, but instead in one for selection. In Germany, the already described dualism between economic and ethical arguments stood out, relying on the opinion that all birds should be protected either with one or the other principle in view. To argue for ethical considerations was to argue against economic ones and vice versa. The task was to find the reason that mattered most, and to either subsume or exclude all other justifications. At the very least, a hierarchy of values was established in which the values lower down in the hierarchy were presented as a means to an end, that is, as tools for promoting the primary value. An often professed love of wild birds is the case in point: the fact that people can become passionate about birds and enjoy watching them was recognized by German ornithologists just as much as by British ones. Yet the former did not consider it to be an independent argument, let alone the main reason for conservation. The enjoyment of birds was taken as a tool to make people aware of species decline and to motivate them to engage in conservation.
While the contrast between the valuation of birds in Britain and Germany around of the turn of the century was marked, it is important not to lose sight of what it provides evidence for. The contrast does not provide evidence for the existence of a time-enduring pattern of culture. The differences in the valuation of birds were instead the product of a specific historical situation, that is, a divergent trajectory in agricultural practices in the 19th century that made the experience of birds in Britain part of the world of play, i.e. leisure activity, and part of the world of work, i.e. economic activity, in Germany. It was not the culture of Britain or Germany at large, but the actual experience of birds that mattered. This difference in experience was, moreover, changing over time. It came into being throughout the 19th century and declined again throughout the 20th century, as subsequent legislation on the topic indicates.
Efforts at international legislation for the protection of birds did not come to an end with the International Convention in 1902. The most promising new beginning was the creation in 1922 of the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP). In 1927, a proposal was made to make the ICBP a member of the League of Nations, but nothing became of it. The next step toward international legislation was taken after World War II with the re-drafting of the international law of 1902. However, like its predecessor, the 1950 International Convention for the Protection of Birds was anything but a success. Only 12 countries ever signed the Convention, and even 20 years later it was in force in no more than 8 countries [Boardman Reference Boardman1981; Boardman Reference Boardman2006; Caldwell Reference Caldwell1996]. What eventually made the difference was yet again the transformation of agriculture, this time in the form of the introduction of synthetic chemicals such as ddt. The large scale use of pesticides in agriculture after World War II not only affected populations of birds of prey, most notably the peregrine falcon; it also made economic ornithology irrelevant [Moore Reference Moore1987; Sheail Reference Sheail1985]. Compared to pesticides such as ddt, Aldrin, Dieldrin, Heptachlor, and others, songbirds were economically insignificant. It was at this point in time that continental European countries such as Germany switched to the British model of protecting rare and endangered bird species, rather than managing the population levels of those relevant for agriculture. The experience of birds moved from economic activities to leisure activities and, with it, went a transformation of their valuation. International legislation on the shooting of migratory birds was successfully instigated in 1979 with the European Birds Directive [Meyer Reference Meyer2011]. Yet it was not the legal framework of the European Community alone that made successful legislation and implementation possible. What provided the ground for legal agreement was the fact that the use of pesticides in agriculture had ended a centuries-old economic focus on birds that prevailed wherever agriculture remained a dominant sector of the economy.
Conclusion
The international movement for the protection of birds in Europe gained momentum among ornithologists in the second half of the 19th century. While there was agreement among experts that bird protection is important, there was a substantial amount of disagreement on the question of which bird species should be protected for what reason. These disagrements were reflected in the divergent national legislation on the topic that was already in place when the international debate began. The legislation in Britain and Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries provides the greatest contrast. The three main forms of valuation of birds––their economic utility as ecological pest control in agriculture, the moral duty to preserve nature in its integrity, and the aesthetic pleasure of engaging with wild birds in leisure activities––could be found in both countries; what differed was the salience given to each argument and the way in which these arguments were related to each other. In Britain, economic arguments were only one argument among many. The logic of argument was pluralistic and cumulative, in the sense that different arguments were presented as compatible with each other. In Germany, by contrast, conservationists recognized the existence of a variety of arguments for conservation, but emphasized the incommensurability of these arguments; they commonly advanced only one argument as valid justification, with a tendency to pit moral against economic arguments and to ignore the enjoyment of nature as an independent third argument.
These differences in the salience of the different valuations of birds and their relation to each other were a reflection of ornithologists’ experience of the natural world. While most bird species that could be found in Britain could also be found in Germany the way people engaged with these birds differed. The experience of birds was part of work, i.e. economic activity, in Germany, while it was part of play, i.e. leisure activity, in Britain. This difference was brought about by the fact that Britain, as the first industrial national in the world, had opened its market to grain imports from the international market, while Germany blocked its domestic markets to such imports even after the onset of industrialization. The result was a divergent trajectory of land use practices in the two countries, that is, the industrialization of agriculture in Germany, turning nature into a shop floor, and a comparative lack of such a development in Britain, together with the accompanying use of parts of the land for leisure activities, that turned nature into a playground.
The relation of the different valuations of birds to each other and the resulting contrast between a pluralistic and a monistic cognitive map was a reflection of their status in real life. A dominance of economic imperatives resulted in the mobilization of equally imperative ethical arguments, which marginalized simple enjoyment as a valid justification. When economic arguments lost salience, enjoyment gained ground and could be mobilized as a counterbalancing force. The cognitive map that came to the fore in assigning a value to birds was thus not passively imposed on nature, but it was the experience of nature itself that actively shaped the formation of these evaluative categories. It is this importance played by the experience of the natural environment that provides the underpinning for the proposed enlargement of the sociology of morality into an ecology of mind. Rather than starting the inquiry into differences in the valuation of nature with a search for isolated social facts as causes, this article looked at the interaction between society and environment to account for these differences. Legislation for the protection of birds was part of an assemblage, to use the language of actor network theory, in which social and environmental factors were co-producing a variety of valuations of birds. While this analysis gives considerable weight to the claim that moral valuations are a central element of social life, it calls into doubt approaches that conceptualize morality as an analytically fixed category or that operationalize it as a self-contained entity akin to a variable. The article shows instead that the boundaries of moral justifications and their either commensurable or incommensurable relationship to other forms of justification are context dependent, including both social and environmental contexts, and should thus themselves be made objects of empirical inquiry.
