BROWN PELICAN
RIEN FERTEL
LSU Press/Louisiana True series
$21.95 trade paper, available now
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In this compelling book, Rien Fertel tells the story of humanity’s complicated and often brutal relationship with the brown pelican over the past century. This beloved bird with the mythically bottomless belly—to say nothing of its prodigious pouch—has been deemed a living fossil and the most dinosaur-like of creatures. The pelican adorns the Louisiana state flag, serves as a religious icon of sacrifice, and stars in the famous parting shot of Jurassic Park, but, most significantly, spotlights our tenuous connection with the environment in which it flies, feeds, and roosts—the coastal United States.
In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt inaugurated the first national wildlife refuge at Pelican Island, Florida, in order to rescue the brown pelican, among other species, from the plume trade. Despite such protections, the ubiquity of synthetic “agents of death,” most notably DDT, in the mid-twentieth century sent the brown pelican to the list of endangered species. By the mid-1960s, not one viable pelican nest remained in all of Louisiana. Authorities declared the state bird locally extinct.
Conservation efforts—including an outlandish but well-planned birdnapping—saved the brown pelican, generating one of the great success stories in animal preservation. However, the brown pelican is once again under threat, particularly along Louisiana’s coast, due to land loss and rising seas. For centuries, artists and writers have portrayed the pelican as a bird that pierces its breast to feed its young, symbolizing saintly piety. Today, the brown pelican gives itself in other ways, sacrificed both by and for the environment as a bellwether bird—an indicator species portending potential disasters that await.
Brown Pelican combines history and first-person narrative to complicate, deconstruct, and reassemble our vision of the bird, the natural world, and ourselves.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I can't think of too many things that more clearly say "Louisiana" to me than the sight of pelicans coming back to their nests from a long day's fishing over the Gulf of Mexico. The unbelieveably narrow brush these big, beautiful bird had with complete, species-level extinction...actually going locally extinct during the rampant mosquito-killing applications of dDT back in the 1960s. That being when I was first aware of the environment of the Gulf Coast and its multivarious bird species, I felt very invested in reading that part especially. (My part of the coast, in South Texas, had more roseate spoonbills over pelicans but they did show up.)
The natural world of Louisiana and of the Gulf Coast more broadly is cramjam full of fascinating creatures very much still threatened by the ongoing actvities of mankind, and the legacy of the petrochemical industry. Climate change won't do that finely balanced system a particle of good, either.
While it is an academic book, a good story is a good story! How this species, a bellweather for the overall environmental health of its native region, was and is being protected is worth reading. This book's a great one for your birder friend, your environmentalist grandchild, your Louisiana-loving nephew who's discovered there's more to the place than the French Quarter...also anyone who just loves that there are still these beauties in the world:
