White, wild, and wonderful Before European settlement, as many as 150,000 trumpeter swans populated the Eastern United States. By the end of the 19th century, they were all gone, victims of pioneer settlers who wanted their meat, or of hatters, who wanted their feathers. (Hatters played a surprisingly large role in the conservation movement: their use of feathers from the great blue heron and the bald eagle helped spark the formation of the Audubon Society and …showed first 75 words of 2128 total…

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