the pelican slaughter of 1911: a history of competing values, killing and private property from the...

The Pelican Slaughter of 1911: A History ofCompeting Values, Killing and Private Property fromthe Coorong, South Australia

EMILY O’GORMAN*Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Received 18 June 2015; Revised 20 October 2015; Accepted 28 October 2015

AbstractIn 1911, approximately 2000 pelicans were slaughtered on a group of islands withinthe Coorong lagoon in South Australia. The islands were a favoured nesting site, anda group of people had waited until the eggs hatched to kill both adult and young birdsin order to collect the maximum payout from a 1 penny bounty that had been put onthe head of each pelican by the South Australian Fisheries Department. The killingsprompted advocates of bird protection, particularly ornithologists, to seek securityfor the rookeries against future raids by leasing the islands. A range of other interestsbecame entangled in this decision, as some ornithologists also sought to prevent lo-cal Aboriginal people from harvesting bird eggs in the area. Examining these eventsand their consequences, this article has two related goals. The first goal is to show therole of animals and their environments in co-shaping legal geographies. The secondis to examine the contours and histories of competing ideas about protection, killing,and private property that shaped the legal geography of the Coorong.

KEY WORDS legal geography; private property; animals; protection; killing;Coorong; South Australia

IntroductionIn 1911, on a group of small, rocky islands in theCoorong lagoon, located in south-eastern SouthAustralia, approximately 2000 pelicans wereslaughtered. Many fishermen have viewedAustralian pelicans (Pelecanus conspicillatus) aspests, and the birds had been added to a list of ‘fishenemies’ in state legislation (Daily Herald (DH),10 February 1911, 4). In addition, the SouthAustralian Fisheries Department had declared a 1penny bounty on the head of each pelican. Aroundthe same time, pelicans also lost the partial protec-tion that had been given to them under separatelegislation. The slaughter had a range of fall-outs. Advocates of bird protection, particularlyornithologists, sought security for the rookeriesagainst similar future events. Further, following

widespread outrage at the slaughter, and drivenby an interest in animal protection, the CrownLands Commissioner decided to lease these anda number of other islands to the ornithologiststo protect the birds by limiting people’s accessto them, among whom were fishermen and localAboriginal people, the later of whom collectedwaterfowl eggs. Between 1908 and 1911, the le-gal status of pelicans on the islands had alreadychanged back and forth several times, revealingcompeting sets of values about pelican protectionand killing, even within the same governmentadministration.In examining the slaughter and its consequences,

this article has two related goals. The first goal is toshow the role of animals and their environments inco-shaping legal geographies. Animal agency has

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been recognised in scholarship from science andtechnology studies (e.g.Haraway, 2008) tomore-than-human geographies (e.g. Whatmore,2002; Lorimer, 2007) to environmental history(e.g.Benson, 2010; Ritvo, 2010). As IrusBraverman et al. (2014, 1) have noted, scholarshipin legal geography broadly seeks to examine the‘reciprocal construction’ of ‘law and spatiality’.Animals are part of ‘spatiality’ and ‘law’, and theirrelationships with people, and behaviours morebroadly, have influenced the ‘reciprocal construc-tion’ of these facets. That is, animals have ‘made adifference’ to the emergence of specific legal geog-raphies. Second, this article shows the importanceof considering competing values and interests be-tween different groups of people in the formationof particular legal geographies, which have in turnshaped possibilities for human–animal relation-ships. More specifically, the pelican slaughterand its fallouts reveal the ways in which viewsof bird protection, animal killing, and privateproperty – all with long historical legacies – haveshaped each other in the legal geography of theCoorong, with a range of mixed outcomes for allthose involved.I first came across papers about the pelican

slaughter in the Coorong in an archive held in theState Records of South Australia that documentedthe leasing of the islands to the ornithologists(SOA, 1911). This archive reveals the complexroles of both the law and the ornithologists, asthe latter sought to manoeuvre through a legalisedlandscape in order to circumvent legislation thatdid not offer the kind of protection they wantedfor birds. In this article, I draw on this archive aswell as other sources such as newspapers andornithological publications, critically placing themwithin broader colonial power structures anddiscourses in which they were generated (Schwartzand Cook, 2002), and using them both to examinethe ornithologists’ complex position in relationto pelican protection and as a lens onto widerissues and other sets of values, namely those heldby fishermen and local Aboriginal people.Pelicans, islands, and lagoons help us to under-

stand the law. For instance, the pelicans’ selec-tion of the islands as a rookery site; theircolonial nesting patterns, which were linked tothe water and fish of the Coorong; and their sizeand appearance as both conspicuous competitorsfor fish and a loved icon in need of protection.Further, in these debates, knowledge of pelicanbehaviour was contested – specifically in relationto whether or not they ate marketable fish –whichwas linked, in turn, to particular sets of values.

This article therefore begins with a brief outlineof both the Coorong area and the pelicans thathave nested there.

The Coorong, pelicans, and islandsToday, the Coorong is an iconic wetland in SouthAustralia, known for its birdlife. It is a long, rela-tively thin, and shallow saline lagoon, locatedsouth-east of Adelaide. In the north, it lies adja-cent to two lakes – Lake Alexandrina and LakeAlbert – and includes the mouth of the MurrayRiver, from there stretching approximately100 km south. The area was open to the oceanuntil a peninsula formed 6–20 000 years agoand, since then, it has sheltered the lagoon fromthe rough coastal waters of the Southern Ocean.Until 2–3000 years ago, the lagoon had twoopenings to the sea, in the north and south. Thesouthern opening then closed, leaving only thenorthern entrance (the river mouth). This area isin constant flux, and the location of the mouthof the Murray River continaues to shift over thecourse of decades (Anon, 1984; Kluske, 1991;Bourman and Barnett, 1995; Bourman et al.,2000; Jeffery, 2001; Fluin et al., 2007).The Ngarrindjeri, the local indigenous people,

have lived in the region for approximately8000years (Anon, 1984; Kluske, 1991; Clarke,1994; Jeffery, 2001). Aboriginal laws stem fromsets of relationships within particular country (forexample, between people, plants, animals, land,and water), and areas have primarily been the ter-ritory of certain groups (Graham, 1999; Watson,2002). The Coorong has been the territory of theTanganekald (or Tanganalun), one group withinthe Ngarrindjeri. During the period of initialBritish colonisation, which officially began inSouth Australia in the 1830s, Ngarrindjerinumbers significantly decreased because ofintroduced diseases such as smallpox and fron-tier conflict with colonists (Anon, 1984; Kluske,1991; Clarke, 1994; Jeffery, 2001). According toone source, in 1842, there were approximately3200 Ngarrindjeri, and in 1874, there were only511 enumerated (Jeffery, 2001). The Britishgovernment had declared South Australia to be‘unoccupied’ prior to official colonisation, andin the late 19th and early 20th centuries, manyNgarrindjeri were moved to land set aside bythe government for Aboriginal people and on topastoral properties and missions (Clarke, 1994).Colonists renamed many landforms, includingthe belt of dunes on the west of the lagoon, whichwas called Younghusband Peninsula after theBritish Home Secretary (Jeffery, 2001).

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Along with a number of creeks, the MurrayRiver contributed fresh water to the Cooronguntil 1940, when the state and federal governmentsbuilt five barrages that separated the lakes from thelagoon and river mouth. This infrastructure wasconstructed in order to prevent salt water fromaffecting upstream irrigation areas (Bourman andBarnett, 1995; Kingsford and Thomas, 2004; Fluinet al., 2007; Kingsford et al., 2011). The Murraynow only contributes fresh water during times ofhigh flow. The area has historically attracted manydifferent kinds of birds, with over 200 species re-corded in the region, alongside other animals andplants (Kluske, 1991; Jeffery, 2001). In 1966, partof the area was declared a national park with agreater area, encompassing the islands, beingincluded from 1972. In 1985, the area was listedas a wetland of international importance, particu-larly as a waterfowl habitat, under the RamsarConvention. In the 1980s, it was also subject tomigratory bird treaties with Japan and China(Japan Australia Migratory Bird Agreement, 1974;China Australia Migratory Bird Agreement, 1986).

In the period under study here, the Australianpelican had been just one of the birds to regularlyvisit the Coorong, albeit a visually prominentone, as these birds can number in the thousands.They also have a distinctive appearance with largepink bills and black and white plumage, and arelarge in size (Figure 1). In fact, Australian pelicanshave been classed as one of the ‘heaviest flying birdsin the world’, with adult males on average weighing8kg (Reid, 2009, 96–97). It is perhaps no surprisethen that the specific epithet in the species’ name,Pelecanus conspicillatus, means ‘conspicuous’. Ac-cording to biologist Julian Reid (2009), nesting adultpelicans need to eat approximately 0.4–0.5kg offish a day, and the availability of food has been amajor factor in the location and size of rookeries.For this reason, pelicans have often used islandsfor rookery sites, which also offer some protectionto eggs and young birds from predators.The Coorong has been, and continues to be, sig-

nificant for pelicans because of its islands. Pelicanshave nested on the ‘Pelican Islands’ – a group ofsix limestone islands in the lagoon – almost every

Figure 1 Australian Pelicans on the Coorong, January 2014.

E. O’Gorman: The Pelican Slaughter of 1911 3


year since records began to be kept in the colonialperiod, at times collectively laying as many as3500 eggs (Anon, n.d.; Chapman, 1963; Kluske,1991).1 Pelicans have been known to breed onthe islands any time between June and March,and biologists have linked the variation in breed-ing times to changes in water height (Chapman,1963; Kluske, 1991). By the early 20th century,ornithologists regarded the islands as one of twomain nesting places for pelicans in South Australia(DH, 10 February 1911, 3;White, 1911; Chapman,1963). Another had existed on an island in PelicanLagoon, located on nearby Kangaroo Island; how-ever, birds had ceased use of this rookery in thelate 19th century, possibly due to raids or huntingpressure (Chapman, 1963).A small fishing industry started in the Coorong

and Lower Lakes region in the 1840s, expandingrapidly after 1885 when steam rail connected thelocal town of Goolwa to Adelaide markets (Olsen,1991; Paton, 2010). Commercial fishing shapedlocal settlements economically and socially,providing employment and supporting the devel-opment of related industries (Olsen, 1991). In theperiod from 1908–1913, fishermen from theCoorong were supplying 11–14.3% of the State’sannual fish haul of 1504.6 t, mostly yellow-eyemullet, tommy ruff (Australian herring), andmulloway (Olsen, 1991). Local fishermen havelong seen pelicans as pests, and reports of youngpelicans being killed and eggs being smashed onthe islands in the Coorong go back to at least the1870s (Chapman, 1963). It is unclear how oftenthese ‘raids’ on the rookeries happened; there issome evidence that it was almost annually.Chapman (1963, 11) noted that these massacreshad apparently happened often enough that ‘[t]heoccasional mention of successful breeding in theearly records may imply that raids did not occurin that season’. In many ways, then, the 1911slaughter was not an unusual event. However, thestrength of the debates it mobilised, particularly re-garding bird protection; the archival and newspa-per records it generated; and the consequences itengendered clearly indicate that something set thisone event apart. In many ways, this ‘something’may be the particular historical moment – locallyand more widely – in which the slaughter tookplace. Further, the strength of the debates andthe fallout seem to indicate that more birds werekilled in the 1911 massacre than in previousyears. This was likely because a bounty had beenput on their heads. I have found no evidence of aprevious bounty on pelicans in this region, despiterumours to the contrary. Chapman (1963, 12), for

example, noted that in 1903, ‘many people in theLake Albert and Lake Alexandrina area wereunder the impression that the Government waspaying scalp money for pelicans’, but this wasdenied by the government. The 1911 slaughter,then, occurred within a local context involvingconflicting values: one of past ‘raids’ and widergovernment efforts to limit damage to fishingand agriculture from ‘pests’ and one reflecting agrowing protection ethos among certain indivi-duals and groups.

The pelican slaughterIn February 1911, news began to reach Adelaideof the slaughter on the Pelican Islands. A localresident of the Coorong area, ‘F.G. Ayres’, wroteto DH, a metropolitan newspaper published inAdelaide, to alert ‘the bird-loving public of SouthAustralia to the law which permits the destructionof pelicans’. In his letter, he recounted thekillings: ‘Recently a small party of men from [thenearby town of] Meningie raided the pelican rook-eries on the Coorong and as a result returned withover 2000 pelican heads, for which they receivedpayment from the Meningie police on behalf ofthe Government’ (9 February 1911, 6). He blamedthe South Australian Government and not the menfor ‘such scandalous destruction of one of the mostmajestic birds in Australia’, given the bounty thathad been placed on the pelicans. Hewas concernedthat the putrefying pelican carcasses would havedeadly consequences for other birds now nestingon the islands amidst rotting flesh. He asked:‘Are not the gulls, the gannets, the various terns,herons, bitterns, griebes [sic], and the beautifulegrets voracious feeders on fish also? Yet thedestruction of one of those birds entails a penaltyof £5’ (9 February 1911, 6).The law that Ayres was calling attention to was

the Fisheries Act Amendment 1909, which waspassed by the South Australian Government inNovember 1909, and which came into force inearly 1910. This legislation, which amended theFisheries Act 1904, formally declared pelicans apest to fisheries within the State and allowedinspectors, if authorised by the South AustralianFisheriesMinister, to ‘receive and destroy the headsof… pelicans’ (§5). Other animals listed as pests inthe original Act of 1904 also stayed on this list, in-cluding cormorants, turtles and tortoises (FisheriesAct 1904, §7; Fisheries Act Amendment 1909, §5;The Advertiser, 4 February 1910, 6). All of thesewere seen by many in the fishing industry as ‘fishenemies’, or more precisely as enemies offishermen. They were blamed for eating, and



thereby reducing hauls of, marketable fish, and con-sequently, the Minister could declare a bounty onthem (DH, 10 February 1911, 3; DH, 10 February1911, 4; Fisheries Act Amendment 1909, §5).Pelicans were particularly conspicuous competitorsfor fish, as they took fish from the nets, often whenfishermen brought the catch to the surface.However, at the time pelicans were officially

listed as pests, they were also protected for partof the year (July to December) under the SouthAustralian Bird Protection Act 1900 (Schedule2).2 This Act had three schedules: the small groupof birds listed in the first schedule were protectedthroughout the State all year; the second schedulelisted the majority of birds (including pelicans),and specified ‘close seasons’, with a view to pro-tect birds during their breeding season from bothmarket and sport hunters; and the third schedulelisted unprotected birds (Bird Protection Act1900; DH, 10 February 1911, 3; DH, 10 February1911, 4). Yet, pelicans on the Pelican Islands in theCoorong had been protected all year round bymeans of another legal mechanism. In 1908, theGovernor had declared part of the region, whichencompassed the islands, a ‘bird protection dis-trict’ under the sameAct for ‘a period of five years’(Figure 2) (Government Gazette, 24 December1908, 1255).

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This declaration protected birds inthe area listed in the first and second schedules ofthe Act for the whole year but did not extend thatprotection to those birds listed in the third schedule(Bird Protection Act 1900, §3 and §4).The protected status of pelicans on the islands,

and throughout South Australia, changed again in1910, when the State Government removedpelicans from the Second Schedule list andplaced them in the Third Schedule (The Register,13 May 1910, 4; Renmark Pioneer, 20 May1910, 8; The Register, 9 August 1910, 2). Thischange meant that there was now no closedseason in the protection district. Presumably,pelicans were moved to this third schedule totally with their listing as a pest to fisheries in1909. Further, the Minister declared a ‘bonusof a penny per head’ on pelicans, which waspaid from the fees for fishing licenses (DH, 10February 1911, 4; The Advertiser, 4 February1910, 6). While there were a number of legalfactors and interests at play, the bounty wasregarded by many as the direct motivation forthe slaughter (discussed below). This view wassupported by a tally from the Chief Inspectorof Fisheries that ‘bonus [sic] have been paidon 2500 heads’ (DH, 10 February 1911, 3), pro-viding evidence that those who killed the birds

waited for birds to hatch in order to collect theirheads and collect the bounty (Fisheries ActAmendment 1909, §5). At a penny each, the to-tal payment for 2000 pelican heads was £8.33,which would be equivalent to AUD$1198.58 in2013.4 At the time, this was a reasonably largesum of money for what would have been afew days work at most. Given the views heldby many fishermen, and accounting for a recenthistory of culling, those who did the killingmay have seen their actions as a communityservice to the local fishing industry. However,as news of the slaughter spread, many people wereoutraged that young birds had been massacredand questioned whether pelicans were a pestat all.That Ayres wrote his letter to a metropoli-

tan newspaper is significant. It implies thathe was trying to bring these circumstances tothe attention of those involved in bird protec-tion in the city of Adelaide. Prominent amongthese were the members of the South Austra-lian Ornithological Association (SOA). Mem-bers of the SOA were strong advocates forbird protection and for the establishment ofseveral protection districts in South Australia(Crompton, 1914). Two leading figures inthe SOA, Samuel White and John Mellor,were particularly active in responding to theslaughter, and earlier, Mellor had publicallyvoiced his opposition to the removal of peli-cans from the list of protected birds (Linn,1990; Walker, 2001; Robin, 2001; TheAdvertiser, 3 June 1910, 5; The Advertiser, 2June 1910, 11; The Advertiser, 9 February1911, 11).White expressed his view of the slaughter

to newspapers soon after the publication ofAyres’ letter, stating that ‘[s]ome scoundrels,it appears, allowed the whole rookery on Peli-can Island [sic] to hatch, to the extent of 2000birds. The rookery has now been swept awaybecause somebody has secured the heads of2000 fledglings… It is one of the most das-tardly acts I have ever heard of’. White arguedthat more such raids – ‘so brutally perpetrated’– would lead to ‘the extermination of this re-markable bird’ (DH, 10 February 1911, 3). Further,like Ayres,White viewed the bounty and removal ofprotection as a vilification of pelicans that would notachieve the State Government’s desire to increasefish hauls. He argued that the SOA ‘can prove thatpelicans do not consume the enormous quantitiesof fish they are alleged to do’ (DH, 10 February1911, 3). Indeed, other biologists and members



of the SOA similarly argued that pelicans did noteat enough fish to be pests, or that they ate fishsuch as bony herring that commercial fishermendid not want (DH, 10 May 1911, 6; The Adver-tiser, 2 June 1910, 11; White, 1911, 344). Whiteasserted that cormorants were also unfairlytargeted and that instead of increasing fish hauls,‘where cormorants have been destroyed fish have

diminished in number’ (DH, 10 February 1911, 3).Therewas a long history of persecution of fish-eatingbirds, particularly cormorants, in the USA andAustralia, and longer still in England (Thomas,1991; Sassoon, 2003). White argued that thistraditional view of fish-eating birds needed re-thinking. He also drew parallels with the USA,where pelican numbers had plummeted after

Figure 2 The Bird Protection Area in 1908. Source: South Australian Ornithological Association (1911).



similarly being targeted as competitors for fish.However, White stated, ‘about 3 or 4 years agothe authorities awoke to the fact that these birdswere not injurious to the fishermen’s trade, andthe authorities set to work to re-establish the birds’by proclaiming an island where pelicans could stillbe found ‘a bird sanctuary’ (Adelaide EveningJournal, 9 February 1911, quoted in White,1911, 344).5

Ornithologists and others saw the pelicanmassacre as possibly contributing to growing in-stances of local and species extinctions of birdsin Australia and around the world. In the northAtlantic, great auks had become extinct in 1844,and emus and pelicans as well as other birds couldno longer be found in some areas of Australia, in-cluding on nearby Kangaroo Island, due to humanactivities (DH, 10 May 1911, 4; DH, 10 May1911, 6).6 Following the slaughter on the PelicanIslands, one reporter wrote that ‘the massacre hadamounted to thousands, and this would soonexterminate the quaint bird, of which Australiahad only the one species’ (The Advertiser, 6 March1911, 11). Indeed, many reporters commented onAustralian pelicans as ‘quaint’, ‘noble’, and ‘re-markable’ birds that were native to the continent,and so in need of protection (The Register, 11February 1911, 12; The Register, 10 February1911, 4; DH, 10 May 1911, 6; Argus, 10February 1911, 8; Barrier Miner, 14 February1911, 3;Cairns Post, 11 February 1911, 3). For in-stance, one reporter wrote that the pelican was that‘peculiar pouched bird which in Australia is thehandsomest of its species’ (DH, 10 May 1911, 4).The story of the raid on the rookeries, and

particularly White’s interview, was picked up bymetropolitan newspapers across eastern Australiaand in some regional presses (for example, SydneyMorning Herald, The Age, Remark Pioneer,Cairns Post, and Northern Star). The massacreof young birds seemed insupportable to many,particularly when coupled with White’s analysisthat pelicans in fact were not eating the quantitiesof fish that the fishing industry claimed. Forexample, the reporter for DH which publishedWhite’s views at length, wrote that the ‘most en-thusiastic fishermen … will object strongly to thetactics commented on in the letter [by Ayres],and will welcome the day when such cruelty isno longer possible’ (10 February 1911, 3). This re-porter also called the massacre of pelicans ‘illogi-cal’ and another described it as both ‘foolish’ and‘cruel’ (DH, 10 February 1911, 3; The Register13 February 1911, 6). Many labelled the bounty‘blood money’ (Northern Star, 14 February

1911, 6; Cairns Post, 11 February 1911, 3; DH,10 May 1911, 6; The Register, 10 February 1911,4; The Advertiser, 6 March 1911, 11). At a timewhen humanitarian views about animals weregrowing, the apparently pointless killing of youngand vulnerable birds garnered particularly wide-spread attention.While no one defended the killing of the

young birds, local fishermen voiced their viewsthat pelicans reduced their hauls, eating fish theywanted for market. A former fisherman from thetown of Meningie, ‘W. Tregilges’, wrote to DHthat ‘I have frequently been four or five dozen…bream short [due to pelicans]… I have put out amullet net at night and in the morning have seenabout 20 or more of them [pelicans] along the netquietly saving me the trouble of taking the fishout, but they would go a little further than thatand cause me to buy more nets’ because of thedamage they caused when they pulled the fishout (15 February 1911, 3). For Tregilges, whilethe ‘pelican, as Mr. Ayres says, may be a majes-tic bird from his and a few other’s [sic] pointof view … according to my idea it is one ofthe most useless and ugly birds we have’ (15February 1911, 3). Fishermen, ornithologists,and others disputed knowledge about pelicanbehaviour, specifically questioning whether ornot they ate large quantities of marketable fish.These conflicting views may reflect the differentvalues held by members of various groups,which could fundamentally frame how they de-fined the problem (Sarewitz, 2004).7 For exam-ple, these groups may have held different viewsabout what were acceptable losses: what orni-thologists regarded as minor losses, fishermenmay have seen as major or unacceptable, withthe added expense or inconvenience of damagednets (O’Gorman, 2014). There were also clearsocio-economic differences intersecting withand shaping these different values and needs, be-tween the leaders of the SOA, who advocatedpelican protection and who were from middle-class and wealthy backgrounds, and the fisher-men, who were often poorer. This division alsocut another way, between the city-based SOAleadership and rural fishermen. These differ-ences in backgrounds likely influenced the con-testation between the two groups in a broadersense (although that was never explicit). In or-der to fully understand this events and its effectsand implications discussed below, it is importantto view them as embedded in a longer and widercontext of contested values and ideas aboutprotection, killing, and private property.



Protection, pests, and private propertyThe pelican slaughter and its fallouts were shapedby contested ideas and values at a range of scales,including international. Environmental historianThomas Dunlap noted of animal bounties in theAnglo-European settlements in USA, Canada,Australia, and New Zealand that everywhere ‘thesettlers had the same goals and used the sametechnologies, but the lands and the animals weredifferent’ (Dunlap, 1999, 52). These differencesand similarities were important in shaping localresponses to the situation. Many other lawsconcerning animals, and contestations over therole of private property, also resonated betweenthese places, and at times others like India andAfrica, which shared a range of cultural and eco-nomic links including through the British Empire(Dunlap, 1999; Cioc, 2009; Beattie et al., 2015).In Australia, early legislation for the protection

of animals was part of the wider project of acclima-tisation (and indeed colonisation) undertaken bygovernments and private citizens throughout theBritish Empire and in the USA (Dunlap, 1999;Osborne, 2000). These laws often sought toestablish ‘useful’ or valuable European gamespecies, such as pheasants and rabbits, and to pro-tect Australian ‘native game’ from over-hunting,among them native ducks and black swans, whichtook on the function of game species similar toothers found in Europe (Newland, 1961; Walker,1991; Stubbs, 2001; Bonyhady, 2003; Jarmanand Brock, 2004; Dow, 2008).8

In the late 19th century and early 20th centurythis situation changed, as most Australian statespassed legislation that offered some protection tonative animals by default and that required unpro-tected animals be listed. South Australia adoptedsuch legislation in 1874, which is relatively earlyin Australia (Game Act 1874). For example, NewSouth Wales only passed a similarly inclusiveAct for birds in 1918 (Jarman and Brock, 2004).This shift reflected people’s concern that manykinds of native birds were being hunted for a rangeof reasons (not just ‘gentlemanly sport’) and werein danger of being exterminated altogether(Newland, 1961). Colonists were killing nativebirds, for example as pests, for the millinery trade,and for market, and other species were often beingkilled accidently during these activities. In addi-tion, birds were routinely captured as exotic petsfor overseas customers or were killed as trophies(Newland, 1961; Olsen, 2010; White, 2013).Pelicans, for instance, were hunted by market and,at times, sport hunters, for their skins and plumage(Newland, 1961; DH, 10 May 1911, 6; South

Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail, 3 April1880, 2–3). The protection laws mainly aimed toregulate hunting during closed seasons over theperiod that was thought to be the birds’ breedingseasons. Yet the laws to protect birds and other an-imals were often ignored, and many people killedthem all year round, as with the pelican rookeryraids on the islands in the Coorong (White, 2013).While these Acts marked a shift in bird pro-

tection, they were also seen by some as a continu-ation of British ‘game laws’ and in South Australiawere debated by politicians at length (Newland,1961). In Britain, Game Acts were passed fromthe late 18th century, which entrenched divisionsand heightened tensions between socio-economicclasses by implementing laws that gave ‘the land-holder the right to protect them [the animals]against poaching or trespass’ (Newland, 1961).Effectively, this meant that those who owned landcould kill game on their land all year round andthose who were not landowners could not. Thosewho caught or killed game on other peoples’ landcould be heavily fined and, if caught at night,imprisoned (Newland, 1961; Paton, 2010). InAustralia, many people wanted to prevent similargame laws from being replicated. Yet, in SouthAustralia, these protection laws were seen by someto similarly favour landowners as they could do asthey liked on their own land while others wereexcluded, and killing on crown land was heavilyregulated (Newland, 1961; see also Jarman andBrock, 2004). Aboriginal people were exemptfrom these laws if they were hunting or collectingeggs on Crown Land (or ‘Waste Land’ in earlierlegislation) but not on private land unless they firstgained the permission of the owner (Game Act1874, §12; Game Act 1886, §12; Bird ProtectionAct 1900, §4; Animals Protection Act 1912, §18;Animals and Birds Protection Act 1919, §20).Animals and birds are important in Aboriginal

kinship and livelihoods. For instance, in theCoorong region, pelicans were important to theNgarrindjeri people as one of the main Ngaitji(Creation Ancestors), their eggs were collectedfrom the islands for food, the birds were eaten,the fat was used to strengthen plant fibres, andthe feathers were used for hunting equipment(Harvey, 1943; Berndt et al., 1993; Clarke, 1994;Clarke, 2003). The exemption of Aboriginal peo-ple from the Acts meant they could hunt all yearround, and might be seen as a recognition of theimportance of hunting and egg collecting in sus-taining Aboriginal communities. Yet it is perhapsbetter understood as evidence of certain contestedcolonial legal views, which, centred on whether



Aboriginal people could be tried under coloniallaws (Watson, 2002).9 In the colonial period inSouth Australia, Aboriginal people were seen bysome colonists as ‘wild and savage’, as subjectto very different laws, and as unable to be triedadequately under British laws (Castles, 1982;Watson, 2002; see also Douglas and Finnane,2012). Others thought those who were ‘makingadvance towards civilization’ should be tried as‘British subjects’ (Reynolds, 1996; Watson, 2002).Aboriginal people’s exemption from bird protectionlaws reflects these contentions about their inclusionin this legal system. The bird protection lawsreinforced the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginalpeople by excluding them from privatised land.Alongside these protective Acts were those that

aimed to destroy animals and birds deemed to bepests. In Australia, by the 1880s, there was anextensive system of bounties in place for particu-lar native and introduced animals and birds,supported by legislation (White, 2013). Manyof these, including those in South Australia, in-cluded provision for ‘scalp money’ on birds andanimals that were declared pests to crop and live-stock farmers.10 In South Australia, it was onlywith the Fisheries Act 1904 that animalsregarded as pests by fishermen were officiallylisted as such.This bounty system was part of what many

‘have… described as the fauna wars of the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ (Olsen,2010), conditions in which many animals andbirds were killed because they were seen tocompete for resources or were blamed for stock,crop, and fish losses. The killing undertaken in thisperiod was extensive and perpetrators oftenbecame fixated on eliminating particular speciesin a given area. In her work on past and morerecent dingo baiting, Deborah Bird Rose (2013,68) has used the phrase ‘will-to-destruction’ todescribe this kind of systematic killing of all of aparticular kind of animal. A single ‘pest’ animalor bird was seen as one too many by some farmersand fishermen (but not all) and any losses oflivestock, crops, or saleable fish was viewed asunacceptable (O’Gorman, 2014).Thus among eastern Australians, from the end

of the 19th century and into the early 20th century,arguments for the protection of birds because oftheir value to farming, fishing, and hunting inter-ests, gained increasing traction among biologistsand others (Walker, 1991; Jarman and Brock,2004). In their history of fauna protection legisla-tion in New South Wales, Jarman and Brock(2004, 6) have argued that this growing call for

greater protection was partly due to intensedrought in the late 1880s and 1890s, whichbrought a realisation to both governments andfarmers that intensive pastoral land use practicesneeded to change, and partly because ‘nativebiota were suffering’. Also, in the context ofNew South Wales, R.B. Walker (1991) has ar-gued that the largely native-born Anglo-Celticpopulation had a better appreciation of nativeflora and fauna than had previous generations ofmostly British and European migrants. Taking anational perspective, White (2013, 467–8) hasargued that a new emphasis on protecting nativefauna was partly due to a new sense of nationalidentity that emerged in the 1880s and 1890s asdiscussions about Federation gathered pace, theemergence of ‘specialised animal advocacygroups’ in response to the ‘destruction beingwrought’, the failure of many introduced speciesto adapt to Australian conditions, and a largerAustralian-born population.Internationally, movements to protect birds

were also growing. In Britain, the USA, NewZealand, and Canada, advocacy groups wereforming to protest the killing of birds for a rangeof reasons, including the use of bird skins andfeathers in women’s fashion, a trend for whichmillions of birds from around the world were beingkilled each year (Doughty, 1975; Dunlap, 1999;Price, 2000). These groups created internationalnetworks, for example the British Society for theProtection of Birds, which protested the plumetrade and which had branches in many countriesincluding Australia (Doughty, 1975; Robin, 2007).Nevertheless, in many places government de-partments and advocates continued to argue forthe protection of birds based on their utility inreducing the numbers of other [pest] species inagriculture and fisheries, and did so partly toavoid being dismissed as sentimental (Dunlap,1997; Jarman and Brock, 2004; Cioc, 2009).As Crompton (1914, 9) noted in his history of

ornithology, the main goal of the SOA (establishedin 1899) was to protect ‘useful’ birds:

This Association has since its inception stood: –Firstly, for the protection of our native birds …as many of them are insectivorous, making theirprincipal if not their only food of pests …Others … consume enormous quantities of theseeds of thistles and other weeds … Othersagain are scavengers, eating dead animals,thereby arresting the spread of disease amongour stock. Again others are the enemies ofsnakes, snails, etc., and lastly the cormorants,



feed on the enemies of our fish althoughfishermen do not all recognize it.

The SOA championed the Bird Protection Act1900 and the Act reflected many of the members’interests, including a focus on protecting econom-ically useful birds and regulating the live exporttrade and plume hunters. According to Crompton(ibid.), members of the SOA had to ‘fight the hardfight for the inclusion of almost every species’,particularly those that were seen as pests, which‘could only be apprised of the good they do, by abody of ornithologists’.11 The bird protection dis-tricts established by the Act were ‘considered bya certain section of the House to be a copy of theBritish Game Laws which they hoped would neverbe introduced into Australia’, but the Act neverthe-less passed (Crompton, 1914, 5–11). Support forhumanitarian protection of birds and animals alsogrew through the first decades of the 20th centuryand was an explicit part of animal protection inthe South Australian Animals Protection Act 1912(Newland, 1961;White, 2013). Indeed, these senti-ments were evident in the widespread condemna-tion of the slaughter of young pelicans in 1911.

Privatising protectionFollowing the slaughter of pelicans in theCoorong, in May 1911 the SOA organised a depu-tation – which included Mellor and White as wellas several other advocates of bird and animalprotection – which visited the Commissioner ofCrown Lands, Crawford Vaughan, to request thatpelicans again be given partial protection by beingreturned to the aforementioned second schedule ofbirds (Anon, 1911).12 Vaughan, however, hadother ideas. Instead, he had been ‘thinking ofestablishing … a defined area on the Coorong ofabsolute protection for birds in the breeding sea-son’, partly to protect them from sport hunterswho ‘accidentally’ hit the protected birds on shoot-ing trips (quoted in Anon, 1911, 45). By the turn ofthe century, the Coorong had become well knownfor its birdlife and a destination for groups ofrecreational shooters from Adelaide (Paton, 2010;A Trip to the Coorong, 1902). Vaughan saw it asa duty of the State Government to enforce the pro-tection of the state’s flora and fauna ‘as Australiahad the most peculiar fauna and flora in the world’and promised to pursue the possibility for estab-lishing a sanctuary for all native birds (quoted inAnon, 1911, 45).Bird protection legislation, however, did not

absolutely protect all native birds, as all birdslisted in the third schedule were unprotected even

in sanctuaries, nor could the schedule limitpeoples’ access to Crown Land. The solutionVaughan used was to lease a number of theislands, including the Pelican Islands, to theSOA on the condition that it prevents people fromvisiting the islands (Barrett, 1911; SOA, 1911).13

This idea resembles other creative solutions usedby bird protectionists in this period, which meantto sidestep legal obstacles. (One example on an in-ternational scale is the Migratory Bird Treaty of1916 between Canada and the USA, which soughtto overcome both opposition to federal bird pro-tection laws by states in the USA and concernssuch laws were unconstitutional, by bringing birdprotection into the clearly federal realm of treaties(Cioc, 2009)). With the lease, which took effect inAugust 1911, the Crown Lands Office gave theSOA the right to ‘prevent any person or personsfrom trespassing’, a key condition of private prop-erty, and the SOA had soon erected signs that no-tified people to keep off the islands (SOA, 1911).Over the next few years, the SOA’s managementof the islands was aided by a local resident,William Goldfinch, ‘who knows all the nooks &crannies of the Coorong’ and who was paid bythe Crown Lands Office to patrol the islands fortrespassers by boat, also killing crows, foxes,and rabbits to protect the pelicans (SOA, 1911).By way of comparison, the protection of pelicansin this way meant a more complex outcome on theCoorong than on the Swan River in WesternAustralia. There, similar disputes at around thesame time over fish-eating birds were ultimatelywon by developers and the fishing lobby, whichoverrode ornithologists’ efforts to change legisla-tion to protect birds, which were afforded noprotection from any ‘last-minute’ creative legalmanoeuvre as occurred on the Coorong (Sassoon,2003). It seems that the political strength of theornithologists in South Australia, as well as thepresence of the empathetic, powerful governmentofficial in Vaughn, influenced this different out-come on the Coorong.Aboriginal peoples’ collection of the eggs of

both black swans and pelicans became entangledin the responses to the pelican slaughter on theCoorong, particularly those meted out by theSOA. Ornithologists and naturalists did notagree with Aboriginal people’s established prac-tice of collecting waterfowl eggs (Clarke, 2003).One of the intentions of leasing the islands appearsto have been to stop Aboriginal people fromgathering eggs. Naturalist and co-editor of Emu(the journal of the national Royal AustralianOrnithological Union), Charles Barrett, wrote a



short statement in one of the volumes, drawingattention to this:

S.A. White … has been making strenuous ef-forts for the last twelve months to secure legis-lation for the protection of the Pelicans and toprevent the so-called aborigines from robbingthe nests of Black Swans and Pelicans. Thename of the R.A.O.U. [Royal Australian Orni-thologists’ Union] has been used in urgingsuch legislation … The island rookeries willnow [that they have been leased], thanks tothe efforts of the South Australian Ornitholog-ical Association be less liable to receive visitsfrom the bird-killers and egg-robbers …(Barrett, 1911, 127–128)14

It was within the context of concerns over theeffects of bounties and raids on these rookeriesby fishermen, as well as within longer historiesof killing fauna since colonisation, that Aborigi-nal peoples’ collection of eggs was seen byornithologists and others as damaging to pelicansand swans.15 While leasing the islands was seenby the SOA and others as an immediate measureto prevent Aboriginal people from gatheringpelican and swan eggs on these islands, changingthe legislation to prevent these practices morewidely seems to have been a broader goal of atleast some ornithologists like White and Mellor(SOA, 1911).In the month following the leasing of the

islands, Mellor travelled to the Coorong on behalfof the SOA, together with local inspector of fisher-ies M.C. Ewens (Figure 3). In his account to theCommissioner of the visit, he wrote that the ‘na-tives rob the nests disgracefully, taking both fresh& well incubated eggs… the Bird Protection Act[should] be applied to blacks and whites from theline south of Adelaide and Mannum’ (SOA,1911). He wrote that ‘both full blooded blacks &half castes’ took eggs and ‘these parts are nowfairly well civilized’, suggesting that rations givenby the government to local Aboriginal peoplecould be ‘increased as compensation’ (SOA,1911). A number of scholars have highlighted thata continent-wide Aboriginal identity in Australiaonly formed within the context of colonisationand ‘Black’ and ‘White’ relations (for example,Langton, 1993; Clarke, 1994; Rolls, 2001). Thecategory of and identification as an Aboriginalperson emerged within a shifting social and politi-cal terrain and remains a contested notion withinindigenous communities (Clarke, 1994; Rolls,2001). Mellor seems to have had a particular and

narrow understanding of Aboriginality, which hethought no longer applied to some in the Coorongregion. Indeed, Barrett’s comment that ‘so-calledaborigines’ took eggs may have stemmed fromsimilar views. These statements echoed the com-plementary discourses of colonisation, race, andassimilation that gained increasing traction inAustralia in the 19th century and endured into the20th century.16

In his letter to DH, Tregilges, the local fisher-man, also raised the issue of the exemption ofAboriginal people from bird protection laws. Hequestioned the protection of swans, which werelisted in the second schedule, as they were numer-ous in the Coorong area, writing ‘I cannot see whythe white man should be debarred from taking afew of their eggs to eat and the natives allowed afree hand’ (15 February 1911, 3). Tregilgesargued that Aboriginal people had collected about2000 swan eggs, many of which were about tohatch, writing that ‘a white man would not do athing like that’ (15 February 1911, 3).17 Here,Tregilges, like Mellor, drew on hierarchical ideol-ogies of race. Tregilges enrolled the treatment ofbirds in this, racially vilifying Aboriginal peopleby portraying them as cruel to birds and so‘uncivilized’.Echoing these discourses, the South Australian

Animals Protection Act 1912 stated that only‘full-blooded’ Aboriginal people were exemptfrom bird protection legislation (§18). While theAnimals and Birds Protection Act 1919 did not in-clude this qualification, it did include the paternal-istic provision that if ‘any of the privileges … arebeing abused’, the Governor could suspend them(§21). The National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972did not include any provisions for Aboriginal hunt-ing or egg collecting, and after this Act, the ‘[s]wan-egging practices of the local Aboriginal peo-ple were by stealth’ (Clarke, 1994, 332; see alsoClarke, 2003). Many state Acts of the 1960s and1970s did not include exceptions for Aboriginalpeople and therefore prevented activities such ashunting, burning, and harvesting plant materialwithin protected areas.While this was also the casefor Coorong National Park from 1972, Aboriginalrangers have facilitated the incorporation ofsome of these activities into park managementin recent decades (Clarke, 1994; Clarke, 2003).Over the last 40years, various avenues have alsobeen developed at state and national levelsthrough which to include indigenous people inprotected areas management, a process that hasbeen significantly influenced by the Aboriginalland rights movement.18 Planning is currently



Figure 3 Mellor’smap of themain islands that were leased to the SOA in 1911. Source: SouthAustralianOrnithologicalAssociation (1911).



underway for Ngarindjerri co-management ofCoorong National Park.This article and the particular case study high-

light the use of private property laws to assert ani-mal protection in the past, in the process shapinganimal–human relationships and the interactionsbetween different groups of people. While theanalysis here is limited to a single case study, itpoints to the need for further research into the deeproots of the use of private property laws specifi-cally for animal and area protection as well as theuneven consequences of doing so (for recent usein Australia, see Moorcroft, 2015; Moorcroft andAdams, 2014).

Pelicans in a changing landscapeIn his 1911 letter to the Crown Lands Commis-sioner, Mellor reported on how the surviving peli-cans were faring. He wrote that ‘the poor oldpelican is still breeding on several of the islandsunder the control of the Assoc. This is gratifying,as I believe that this is the only spot in this statewhere this particular bird now breeds’ (Anon,1911). A few months following the slaughter, pel-icans had returned to at least some of the islands.The leasing of the islands by the SOA, however,did not stop raids from happening altogether, andpeople continued to slaughter the young birdsand smash eggs. H.T. Condon (1941, 92) wrotethat many times ‘during the last ten or twelve yearsthe pelicans on the islands of the Coorong, SouthAustralia, have been subjected to maraudingparties which have clubbed the young ones todeath or trampled them down with heavy sea-boots’. He noted that it was difficult to prosecutethose who undertook the raids as ‘informants arealways unwilling to state their evidence publicly’(p. 92). Later, Chapman (1963, 8) wrote that acrossthe previous 60years, there had been a ‘marked de-cline’ in the number of pelicans in the region, but itwas difficult to quantify as recordings of the num-ber of pelicans had been sporadic and often madeduring infrequent visits by different biologists.He attributed the general decline partly to the raidson the rookeries but also to a range of changes inthe lagoon and the region more generally withinthis short period. These changes included thedraining of swamplands for agriculture both lo-cally and along the length of the Murray River;the canalisation of the river for shipping and irriga-tion; the construction of barrages blocking theMurray River mouth; and the introduction andspread of new species of fish in the Murray system(see also Bourman and Barnett, 1995; Kingsfordand Thomas, 2004; Fluin et al., 2007; Kingsford

et al., 2011). Some of these changes helped to in-crease the salinity and alter the depth of the lagoon,and changed other aspects of pelicans’ habitat andfood resources. After a widely-publicised raid onthe rookeries in 1962, the South AustralianGovernment regained the management of theislands, declaring them ‘prohibited areas’, placingthem under the care of the Fisheries and GameDepartment, and later declaring them part of theNational Park.Those who undertook the slaughter, and those

regulatory structures such as bounties that havesupported these activities, ultimately sought toachieve an immediate and drastic reduction inpelican numbers or local extinction. While peli-can numbers may have declined in the areabecause of habitat changes and slaughter, wecan also see their continued nesting on the islandsas a defiance of these attempts, even as breedingon Kangaroo Island ceased. Reid has calledpelicans ‘flexible responders’ both for their abilityto take advantage of sudden floods and becausethey have found new food sources, including atrubbish dumps, and nesting sites within changinglandscapes, such as artificial islands (2009, 105).Likewise, their continued nesting on the Coorongdemonstrates their ability to adapt to newcircumstances.In focusing on the pelican slaughter and its

aftermath, this article has had two goals. The firstgoal has been to show the role of animals and theirenvironments in co-shaping certain legal geogra-phies. The pelicans, the fish, the islands, and thelagoon all ‘made a difference’ in the shiftinglegal geography of the Coorong. The second goalhas been to demonstrate the significance of consid-ering competing values in the creation of particularlegal geographies and to show how these haveinfluenced possibilities for human–animal rela-tionships. In particular, I have sought to examinesome of the intersecting views about pelicanprotection, killing, and private property that haveshaped the Coorong’s legal geography, lives, andlivelihoods. At different times, laws and regulatorystructures have encouraged, and at other times theyhave limited, access to the main pelican rookerysites in this area, with a range of mixed outcomesfor all those involved. The slaughter and its effectsand implications reveal the long historical legaciesof bird and fauna protection, the persecution ofparticular species, and the deep roots of more re-cent conflicts over the exclusion of people fromprotected areas. Further, long-running class con-flicts and entrenched racist discourses also cameto bear on the regulations that related to the



slaughter and influenced it fallouts, including thelegal exclusion of some groups from the islands.We continue to live in landscapes with contestedvalues and with the legacies of the past disputes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis research was funded by a Macquarie University New StaffGrant. Most of the writing was undertaken during a CarsonFellowship at the Rachel Carson Center, LMU. Thanks to PhilipClarke, Thom van Dooren, the Multispecies Group at theRachel Carson Center, the Legal Geographies Group of theInstitute of Australian Geographers, and seminar audiences atthe Rachel Carson Center, the University of Cambridge andHarvard University for their comments which have greatlyimproved this paper.

NOTES1. Today, these are named Teal Island, North Pelican Island,

Halfway Island, Pelican Island, Seagull Island, and MellorIsland. The islands vary in size, with the largest being about6 ha and the smallest about 1 ha. The extent of the islandsfluctuates with the rise and fall of water in the Coorongcaused by seasonal inflows and, occasionally, floods(Kluske, 1991).

2. There were similar contradictions in legislation, anddebates, regarding fish-eating birds on the Swan River inWestern Australia around the same time (see Sassoon,2003).

3. The area of the sanctuary was ‘the whole of the waters ofthe Coorong and all the islands therin, south-east of Parnkaand Section B, hundred of Glyde’ (Government Gazette, 24December 1908 1255).

4. This was calculated using the Pre-Decimal Currency Con-verter from the Reserve Bank of Australia, http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html. Accessed18 November 2014.

5. This was Pelican Island in the Indian River, Florida,which became the first Federal Bird Reserve in the USAwhen it was established in 1903 (Doughty, 1975;Wilson, 2002).

6. For more on emu extinctions, see Robin, 2009, 242–266.7. Sarewitz explores the connection between knowledge and

values in the context of the sciences.8. For more on the particular South Australian legislation at

this time, see An Act to Prevent wanton Destruction ofcertain Wild and Acclimatized Animals 1864; Newland,1961.

9. The exclusion and then inclusion of Aboriginal people inthis kind of legislation have had implications for later le-gal cases relating to Native Title, particularly regardingcontinued traditional practices (for example, see Butterly,2014).

10. ‘Scalp money’was defined as ‘a sum payable in respect of aportion of the skin of the head of any vermin to which bothears are attached, or in respect of the head of any bird’. Vermin Destruction Act 1882, §2.

11. Studying birds also meant collecting specimens, and duringthe 19th and early 20th centuries, many birds were killedand eggs preserved for museum collections around Australia (Dunlap, 1999; Robin, 2007).

12. The deputation also included M. Symonds Clark (secretaryFauna and Flora Protection Society), E. Ashby (member ofthe Royal Society), and F.R. Zietz (ornithologist at the Adelaide Museum) (Anon, 1911).

13. The islands include in the lease lay between ‘betweenWood’s Well and Salt Creek’ (SOA, 1911; see alsoChapman, 1963).

14. The phrase ‘so-called aborigines’ is discussed further in thesucceeding text.

15. There is some evidence to suggest that the initial bird protection district in the region, established in 1908, waspartly intended by local government officials – led by aFisheries Inspector – to stop ‘whites and natives’ fromcollecting swan and pelican eggs, in addition to preventingshooters from over-hunting birds (The Advertiser, 12December 1908, 11; Observer, 19 December 1908, 36;Chronicle, 26 December 1908, 39; The Advertiser, 6January 1909, 8; The Register, 6 January 1909, 3; TheRegister, 10 November 1906, 6).

16. Many Aboriginal people and scholars have problematisedthese ideologies, embedded in language, within the postcolonial movements of the last few decades. Notions of ‘bloodpurity’ have also been examined by many indigenousscholars as a problematic notion of identity that has carriedforward discourses of race and assimilation (see discussionin Rolls, 2001).

17. According to cultural geographer Philip Clarke, some olderAboriginal men preferred to eat bird eggs just before theywere about to hatch (Clarke, 2003).

18. Indigenous Protected Areas (national) and Co-Management(state and national) are two government arrangements, developed over the last 30 years, that have sought to officially recognise and value indigenous environmental knowledge andmanagement (Ross et al., 2009).

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