But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more 7. The war had a dramatic effect on otter hunting and campaigns against the sport, although individual hunts dealt with the hostilities in their own ways. AP Bio Final Questions Flashcards | Quizlet What humbugs we are!Footnote 3. 21 Google Scholar. The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. Bobcats and otters or their pelts must be delivered to an agent of the Conservation Department for registration or tagging before selling, transferring, tanning or mounting by April 10. 53, To show that this practice was not a thing of the past, Collinson then lifted more recent examples from the May 1906 Animals Friend: An otter, after being worried for four hours, gave birth to two cubs, and was afterwards hunted for two hours more before she was killed. What can look more ridiculous than a middle-aged woman, hurrying along, mile after mile, through wet grass and muddy pools, climbing fences and walls, her clothes sticking to her body and her hair half down her back?Footnote If the mere presence of women was condemned, then the role they played in, and joy they gained from, the death of the otter was shocking. 6 Otter reintroductions were common during this time. The first publication solely concerned with exposing the cruelties of otter hunting was Joseph Collinson's 1911 The Hunted Otter, a twenty-four page booklet in Ernest Bell's A. Walter Cheesman and Mildred Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, 1904, Unpublished, East Sussex Record Office, Reference AMS5788/3/1, p. 3. We appeal to the chivalry of English men and women to make these so-called sports impossible.Footnote Allen, Daniel, The Hunted Otter in Britain, 18301939, in Middleton, K. and Pooley, S., eds, Wild Things: Nature and the Social Imagination (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar; 75 74 12. the killing of baby cubs must needs go on, though a grief and pain to all concerned in their ultimate destruction.Footnote He did however come to the conclusion that their conduct had been reprehensible.Footnote Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 49 57. In fact, this member felt that the latter was worse than the former: In the one case a crowd of men became infected with a sudden attack of blood lust, and were carried away by the excitement of the moment to the temporary exclusion of all feelings of humanity. The Hawkstone Otter Hounds disbanded in 1914, putting down most of their hounds. In 1901 Coulson had written that: Some of the clergy revel in it the very men who pose afterwards as the expounders of high morality.Footnote The regular otter hunter deliberately indulges in cruelty without the saving grace of feeling shame on the contrary, the returning cars and local tap rooms ring with the complacent boastings of the lords and ladies of creation.Footnote Newcastle Daily Journal, 29th May 1914, cited at http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. Daily Mail, 23rd May 1906, cited in 59. 45 76. The seasonality, setting and pedestrianism of otter hunting appealed to Edwardian sporting and leisure sensibilities. Coleridge won the audience at the meeting over to his case. He is remembered today for his monumental two-volume Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (191921); for his natural history collections now held at Kew, the British Museum, and London Zoo; and for his identification of the okapi (Okapi johnstoni) in the Congo in 1901.Footnote 14364Google Scholar; In these terms, if fishermen, as the only people with a genuine grievance against otters, did not feel the need to hunt and kill them on the grounds of revenge, then the animal was not a pest. British Sporting Art, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. 28 66. That year, some conservation measures were established, but unregulated killing resumed in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska. Joseph Collinson, The Hunted Otter (1911), p. 19. These snaps, which had been taken by otter hunters, were lifted from local newspapers then republished with evocative captions. CrossRefGoogle Scholar. . She is about to be afforded the pleasure, the privilege, of being harried and hunted and having her living guts ripped out by forty human beings, twenty or thirty hounds and some terriers.Footnote In August 1938 the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports gained permission to reprint the chapter in leaflet form. This was the month when the Barnstaple cat-worrying case was in the public eye. It depicts Varndell as a solitary figure deep in thought. It is a brutal, demoralising amusement. Here, the criticism of otter hunting seems to be directed more at the spectator's reaction to the prolonged death-agony, than the actual experience which the animal is going through. WebThe feeding habits of otters vary greatly depending on species, location, and time of year or season. 40, As a result of the Humanitarian League's campaigning, by 1906 otter hunting had become an issue of public debate. Although Coleridge's speech was welcomed with loud cheers and rapturous applause, the chairman of the committee was far from impressed by the impromptu inclusion of the subject. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals . In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. . The Spirit of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 62. The following year, the Fur Seal Treaty was signed and although the Google Scholar. Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote In 2010 a painting normally considered too upsetting for modern tastes which while impressive was also undeniably gruesome was displayed at an exhibition of British sporting art at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. Why Otters Are Endangered? Otter hunting presents to him a picturesque scene, with the scarlet-coated, white-breeched men armed with spears, with shaggy hounds, and the landscape set with great marsh marigolds. Bell-Irving, David Jardine, Tally-Ho: Fifty Years of Sporting Reminiscences (Dumfries, 1920), p. 120 Each of these examples shows how a certain body of evidence, produced by otter hunters to promote their sport, was used by campaigners to argue their case against it. Otter During 1970-71, 93 sea otters were released in Oregon. With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. Brought up as a sportsman and still a keen angler, this well-known Northumberland country gentleman and Justice of the Peace was a staunch and fearless friend of animals.Footnote 2956Google Scholar; Tichelar, Michael, Putting Animals into Politics: The Labour Party and Hunting in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Rural History, 17 (2006), 21334, 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also In this case, which was brought by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Master of the Cheriton Otter Hounds, Mr Walter Lorraine Bell, and three of its members were found guilty of charges relating to cruelty to cats. Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. are not infrequently killed, even in the summer months, and then, of course, the whole litter is destroyed. Mackenzie, John M., The Empire of Nature (Manchester, 1988), p. 33 He argued that if the government cared for the preservation of beauty in England, the otter would long ago have been placed on the protected list, and would not have been subjected to the undiscriminating attacks of sportsmen.Footnote 64. Mr Collier's Otter Hounds were the last to abandon the spear in 1884, as his field did not care to see so gallant a beast suffer such an end.Footnote The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports publicised its views in much the same way as the Humanitarian League and from January 1927 they started producing a monthly journal Cruel Sports.Footnote Ernest Bell, Cat Worrying by Sportsmen, The Animals Friend (1905), 1823. Johnston's opinion of the otter and motivation for its protection were also quite unusual. Addressing the issue in Cruel Sports, a member with the pseudonym Wansfell could not see how it was fair to hold the Workington roughs up to obloquy without doing the same to devotees of organised otter hunting. This indicates that despite the ongoing challenge from the anti-blood-sports movement, in 1939 hunting rhetoric still informed the public's perception of otters and otter hunting. Raymond, Graham . In the minds of campaigners it not only looked ridiculous, it was unacceptable. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 It was the only organisation that called for the legal protection of otters at the beginning of the twentieth century.Footnote UKWOT has According to Coulson those who engaged in the kill became virtually maddened by it.Footnote J. C. Bristow-Noble, Madame, 22nd July 1905, 171, cited in Cheesman and Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, p. 43 [Actually it was Mrs Kellogg-Jenkins, Battle, who had been born in San Francisco, 1911 census]. The principles of this League echoed those of its predecessor, that it was iniquitous to inflict suffering, either directly or indirectly, upon sentient animals for the purpose of sport.Footnote An incredibly vile sport: Campaigns against Otter Destruction: The Maritime Fur Trade - Elakha Alliance Exploitation of otters The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. . Sea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. "During the fur trade, Clathromorphum persisted through centuries where urchins presumably abounded," Rasher said. "However, the situation has drastically changed this time around. Moreover, otters are not hunted by fishermen, but by people whose notions of fun are to go out and kill something.Footnote He also pointed out that Geoffrey Hill of Hawkstone had killed 544 otters between 1870 and 1884, and that William Collier of Culmstock had also accounted for 144 between 1879 and 1884. Interestingly, the magazine did not choose a classic scene of hounds in a watery landscape. Even if she is prevented from doing so, she will hang about the place where they are, and perhaps be killed wet when the cubs, too, will perish.Footnote 88. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports also publicised isolated malpractices to strengthen their argument. A key criticism was of the voyeurism of watching the otter die. Drawing his facts from The Field of 8th October 1910, Collinson explained that the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds had recorded a total of twenty-two otters, the Border Counties accounted for twenty-five, and the Hawkstone finished with forty. Although in the book he admits this was partly due to the animal's nocturnal behaviour, in the shortened leaflet the omission of the introductory paragraph made otter hunting the prime reason for his misfortune. He saw that miserable little animal was pursued by men with large poles with spikes in their heads, men who would put on a tall hat and go to Church on Sundays, while women disgracing their sex stood by and lent their countenance and encouragement to the brutal proceedings. In the Aleutian Islands, a massive and unexpected disappearance of sea otters has occurred since the 1980s. The cause of the decline is not known, although the observed pattern of disappearances is consistent with a rise in orca predation. Sea otters give live birth. After only two months, the pressure on the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals proved too much and in July 1906 Animal World announced that the committee was not prepared to take any action on the motion moved by Stephen Coleridge with regard to otter hunting. The History of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds (Powys, 1988), p. 24.Google Scholar. . Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. The passage not only stresses the moral inconsistency of the public, it also underlines the hypocrisy of sportsmen. An incredibly vile sport: Campaigns against Otter School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, Keele University, ST5 5BG, UKD.Allen@keele.ac.uk, School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UKCharles.Watkins@nottingham.ac.uk, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793315000175, The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands, A Delightful Sport with peculiar claims: The Specificities of Otterhunting, 18501939, Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850, Wild Things: Nature and the Social Imagination, Otters as Symbols in the British Environmental Discourse, Records of the Culmstock Otterhounds, c. 17901957, Tally-Ho: Fifty Years of Sporting Reminiscences, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Some inhuman wretch: Animal Maiming and the Ambivalent Relationship between Rural Workers and Animals, The Hounds of Spring.
