Somewhat interesting local Florida history of the "plume trade" aka the great slaughter of most of Florida's bird life, which was part and parcel of similar die-offs at the hands of gun-toting freedom loving Americans in the late 19th century. The book has structural issues: it continually introduces new names that are not fleshed out; the story telling is good in short bits but has trouble hanging together as a narrative; it meanders touching on too many topics while not expanding on others. Nevertheless, I did get some things out of it. This is a local history and you get a sense of frontier life in Florida, including the barefoot mail carrier who walked 20+ miles along a beach to deliver the mail; what people were thinking as they killed off the birds (they knew it was bad but did it anyway), how it was driven by demand and big money traders. The first person to take a stand was of course killed himself, this is his story. I'd never heard of Guy Bradley before but he is pretty famous in the Florida - books, movies, awards, plaques, trails, etc.. so I am glad for this introduction. To be honest I think the Wikipedia article tells the story with more clarity but once you have that as background the book fills in details and adds color. ( )

From Publishers Weekly
In the late 19th century, McIver explains, as many as five million egrets, herons, flamingos, spoonbills, terns, cormorants and other species were killed each year in Florida, shot by plume hunters who often decimated entire rookeries and sold the feathers to the American millinery trade to decorate women's hats. In 1901, to save them from extinction, the American Ornithologists' Union, backed by the newly formed Audubon Society, persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a law making the killing of birds other than game birds illegal. In his carefully researched account of the struggle between environmentalists and plume hunters, McIver (Hemingway's Key West) tells the story of Guy Bradley, a reformed plume hunter in the frontier town of Flamingo, who was hired in 1902 as game warden of Monroe County and three years later was killed while trying to enforce the unpopular law. McIver spends a lot of time on details of Bradley's family history and on the changes wrought on southern Florida by the developer and railroad magnate Henry Morrison Flagler, a story that is important in its own right but adds little to the account of Bradley's murder. His killer, a plume hunter whose son the game warden was trying to arrest for shooting birds, got off scot-free because there was so little sympathy for the Florida bird protection law. McIver's story might have been more effective if he had spent more time looking into the lives of the Everglades' settlers and showing how a law that increased their economic hardship could lead to murder. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
It's one thing to dedicate your life to speaking out about the need to protect endangered species; it's another to put your life on the line. By vividly relating the highly dramatic story of Guy Bradley (1870-1905), "first martyr in the fight to protect wild birds," prolific writer and documentary filmmaker McIver rescues from obscurity a key chapter in the history of American environmentalism. Bradley came of age in the wilds of south Florida at the height of the mania for feather-festooned women's hats, a craze that decimated the Everglades' once gloriously fecund rookeries. As wealthy entrepreneur Henry Morrison Flagler conjured Palm Beach and Miami out of the swampy wilderness, and tough, well-armed men did whatever it took to earn a living, millions of egrets, flamingos, and herons were systematically slaughtered. The first bird protection law was finally passed in 1901, and Bradley, smart and courageous, was hired to enforce it as game warden and deputy sheriff, a harrowing undertaking that ended in a fatal confrontation. With great finesse, McIver evokes Bradley's tumultuous world, chronicles the pitched battle to save wild birds, and resurrects a true folk hero. Donna Seaman
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