A Shadow and a Song: The Struggle to Save Endangered Species

by Mark Jerome Walters

The sparrow, like the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, was the victim—the innocent bystander—of an intense human struggle between those who advocate growth and jobs at any cost and those who insist that each life form that is endangered be protected. This is the story of how the Endangered Species Act failed a small songbird, the dusky seaside sparrow. The sparrow's only habitat lay in the path of the Kennedy Space Center, not far from Disney World. Mark Walters' moving narrative describes how the social and political forces of an era forced irrevocable and profound changes in the environment of Brevard County, Florida, and brought about the extinction of a small bird. Walters begins his story in the late 1950s, before Cape Canaveral was renamed the Kennedy Space Center. Against the backdrop of Merritt Island and the marshlands along the Indian, Banana, and St. Johns rivers—the only places on the planet where the sparrow thrived—he chronicles the struggles of many different personalities, strong-minded individuals whose lives and personal fates become inextricably entwined with those of the dusky. The cast of characters includes the head of Brevard County Mosquito Control, bureaucrats and rangers with U.S. Fish & Wildlife, NASA administrators, real estate developers, ranchers, highway engineers, egg collectors, conservationists, and finally, Disney World itself, home of the last duskies and their hybrid offspring. The sparrow, like the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, was the victim—the innocent bystander—of an intense human struggle between those who advocate growth and jobs at any cost and those who insist that each life form that is endangered be protected at any cost, and few, if any, winners in the end.

Genres: Birds, Nature

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1992

Reviews

[Tyler Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the process of going to the moon, we got so eager for what could be that we lost what we already had.

In short, A Shadow and a Song does a phenomenal job at capturing the many different challenges the Dusky Seaside Sparrow and conservationists faced: from DDT, to habitat loss due to development, floods, and fires, to political intrigue, to scientific debates over what it means to be a species and what counts as a member of a species. While I think there are some organizational issues that could be fixed, extinction, especially man-made extinction, is a messy process and it is hard to capture what happened to the dusky in an easy-to-read way.

In long....

A Shadow and a Song tells the story of the Dusky Seaside Sparrow, a small subspecies of seaside sparrow that lived on the Atlantic coast of Florida, in what's now the shadow of the Kennedy Space Center. The Dusky Seaside Sparrow is now extinct, and humans are to blame. DDT and impoundments, originally designed to combat mosquitoes, killed many birds and destroyed (the already limited) dusky habitat on Merritt Island. The construction of highways and housing developments also destroyed dusky habitat around the St. Johns River.

One major focus of this book is the government's role in conservation. Walters explains that when NASA chose to build the Kennedy Space Center in prime dusky habitat, the agency had unknowingly bought a species (18). The acquisition of this land would put local, state, and national government agencies in direct contact with the Dusky Seaside Sparrow. For the rest of the dusky's existence, governments of all jurisdictions grappled with how to manage this subspecies.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Endangered Species legislation made it so that the federal government could buy land to create refuges to protect endangered species, and made it so that federal agencies like NASA could not act in any way that could hurt these protected populations. However, despite these new laws, political interests hindered attempts at protecting duskies at the wildlife refuge, as the refuge focused more on supporting profitable duck hunting than protecting the endangered subspecies. Later changes in Endangered Species legislation would further weaken the dusky's protection under federal law.

Later debates over whether or not to spend government money to support a dusky hybrid breeding program demonstrates a new biopolitics, as the government picked and chose which species they would "make live" and which species they would "let die". Government officials with US Fish and Wildlife opposed plans to breed Dusky Seaside Sparrows with the closely related Scott’s Seaside Sparrow to create a hybrid dusky because they felt that the program would be too costly, and that money could be better spent on other species with higher chances of a population recovery. As a result, the dusky became a victim of triage: while the government accepted hybrid breeding plans to make the Peregrine Falcon and Red Wolf live, the Dusky Seaside Sparrow was left to “let die”.

Beyond financial concerns, scientists and government officials also debated whether hybrid duskies were even “real” duskies and whether human-influenced hybridization of a species should be allowed. These debates raised numerous interesting political ecological questions, such as “what does it mean to be a member of a [sub]species?”, and “who has the power to decide what gets to count as a member of a [sub]species?”. Scientists in favor of the breeding program argued that our notion of a subspecies is really a man-made construct, not something reflected in nature. Meanwhile, government officials utilized their own definition of species and subspecies. The government’s definitions of species and subspecies focused on the notion of genetic purity, and conflicted with the definition used by scientists. Due to the government definitions’ emphasis on genetic purity, the dusky’s hybrid offspring would not be protected by laws regarding endangered species, regardless of how greatly their definition varied from modern biologic beliefs (156-157). Because the government had the final power to determine what did/did not count as a member of a [sub]species, they were able to determine the dusky's fate, yet another example of how the government engaged in biopolitics. By the time a formal breeding plan was eventually put into place, the last male sparrows were too old to produce offspring.

Another thing that caught me eye was just how frequently supporters of the hybrid breeding program argued that what they supported was “natural” and therefore good. As I already mentioned, supporters argued that the category of “subspecies” was an entirely a man-made concept, so using this unnatural categorization alongside the government's unscientific definition of species as rationale to prevent the hybrid breeding program was flawed logic (156-57). Additionally, supporters of the program claimed that human-influenced hybridization is just taking the natural process of hybridization and changing the timescales from millennia to a few years (148-150, 156). In both of these examples supporters of the hybrid breeding program used the concept of “natural” as justification for backing their plan.

Overall what interests me most about this book is my personal connection to the Dusky Seaside Sparrow, which is to say, none. I was born a decade or so after the Dusky Seaside Sparrow went officially extinct in 1990. The subspecies had lived for millennia here in the U.S. but vanished before I ever got a chance to see them or to hear their song. The Dusky and I passed like ships in the night. It's fascinating to think just how close I was to seeing this species alive. It's also fascinating just how obsessed I have become with this subspecies that went extinct right before I was born. Extinction is not as rare these days as I perceive it to be, and while I may have just missed the Dusky Seaside Sparrow, there are many species out there right now that need help to stave off the same fate. It's unfair for me to make what once was a living, breathing bird into a simple call to arms or cautionary tale, but if we don't act soon, there will be many more species that pass like ships in the night, birds and snakes and fish that I will have missed my chance to see.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly heartbreaking story. I first read this book three and a half years ago when I started my first post-college job working as a wildlife technician. I was working at both St. John’s and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuges, the two focal locations in the book. I reread this book in anticipation of my return to St. John’s NWR for an upcoming field season, going into my fourth year of marshbird research.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this one, author Mark Jerome Walters returns to his homeland in eastern Florida: Merritt Island and the marshlands of the St. John’s, Banana and Indian rivers. As a boy, the dusky seaside sparrow had also lived there, but when he returned to research the book, it was gone, extinct.

Walters writes, “Here I was again, brought back unexpectedly by an extinction that seemed a metaphor for the changed landscape that surrounded me. It all seemed so futile and helplessly inevitable. Who were the losers in this debacle and who, if anyone, were the winners? Did it matter that the dusky was gone; if not why had I written about it? With the sparrow lost, at the very least an interpretation of what had happened to it should be left behind. The eternal void of its absence might at least be partially filled.”

Walters details the sad chain of events: DDT, mosquito control and rapid urban development that led to dramatic population losses of the dusky seaside sparrow, a dark streaked songbird that liked salt marshes dominated by broomgrass AND the badly botched recovery orchestrated by well-meaning but hapless wildlife officials that took years formulating a plan that came far, far, far too late.

Thank God I’m not a dusky or I wouldn’t be here to write this.

Poignant and tenderly written by someone that cared about the region and the bird.