On this fateful trip, Johnson's guide began telling him about his own hobby of Victorian salmon fly-tying. How? A century earlier, the very concept of extinction was mocked by many who believed that the earth’s bounty was never-ending: now, species like the Auk and the Passenger Pigeon were going extinct.
Once inside, Rist stuffed hundreds of rare bird skins into a suitcase he'd brought along.
He provided the author with a thumb drive containing critical evidence that moved the investigation forward.
CONTACT PHOTOGRAPHER TIM LAMAN FOR LICENSING: http://www.timlaman.com/photo-galleries/birds-of-paradise/, The Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), another bird whose colorful feathers are prized by fly-tiers, photographed in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. .
Curators secreted its bird skin collection in unmarked lorries to manors and mansions throughout the English countryside, among them the recently-acquired Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum in Tring. . In April Rist, a US citizen, was given a … The Spangled Cotinga (Cotinga cayana), one of the seven subspecies known to fly-tiers as the Blue Chatterer. Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century. Many of those birds bore tags identifying that they'd been collected 150 years earlier by a naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace, who was a colleague of Charles Darwin. The tiny bird, whose turquoise feathers are called for in many Victorian-era salmon fly “recipes,” sells for over $1,000 on eBay and in the fly-tying forums.
While most of the feathers (to tie flies) can be obtained legally, there’s an extensive black market for the tufts of species now protected or endangered. Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, born into a family of legendary bankers but drawn to the natural world. https://www.paimages.co.uk:443/image-details/2.9838258, The author, Kirk Wallace Johnson.
Edwin Rist, 22, of High Street, Willesden Green, London, burgled the Natural History Museum, Tring in 2009. Edwin Rist arrives at Hemel Hempstead Magistrates Court, where he admitted stealing rare bird skins from the Natural History Museum in Tring. CREDIT: PUBLIC DOMAIN, Sixteen hundred Hummingbird skins, sold for two cents apiece at a London millinery auction in 1912. The story was featured on NPR's This American Life, "The Feather Heist".
CREDIT: Spencer Seim, Ziafly.com, The Wheatley no. CREDIT: Long Nguyen, A cartoon from an 1899 edition of Punch, arguing against the wearing of birds and feathers.
CAN BE LICENSED FROM: http://www.istockphoto.com/photo/resplendent-quetzal-in-costa-rica-gm636867864-113255255, The Red-Ruffed Fruitcrow (Pyroderus scutatus), known to contemporary practitioners of the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying—including Edwin Rist—as Indian Crow, at the Intervales State Park in São Paulo, Brazil.
CREDIT: Natural History Museum, London. “We have here a well-bred hobby noteworthy of the attention of the greatest amongst us . CREDIT: NHM Images, The British Natural History Museum in Tring. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, some 40 million pounds of plumage were imported into England, a number dwarfed by the 100 million pounds imported into France. And, we have an obsessive amateur detective in Johnson who finds his double in Rist, the feather-obsessed criminal. A corridor of specimen cabinets at the Natural History Museum in Tring. It turns out that what started off for him as an escape from the strains of refugee aid work became a mission to alert readers to the vulnerability of natural history collections like the Tring that may hold answers to the problems of extinction and climate change.
Suffering from PTSD as a consequence of years of aid work in Iraq, Johnson had taken up the meditative sport of fly-fishing. Edwin was just 11 when he caught by chance on television a demonstration of how to tie a fly for trout fishing. A single museum-grade skin can sell for $6,000. Women also led the charge in the United States, forming Audubon groups and pledging to refrain from wearing feathers. On eBay, packets of six feathers are routinely listed for $39. Instead of using costly feathers from exotic species, Seim uses substitute feathers, made from dyeing plumes from ordinary game birds like Turkeys and Pheasants. Many species have since been protected by international treaties. Rist stole the birds for the purpose of selling the feathers in Victorian salmon flies, to raise money to buy a gold flute. Another subspecies, the Banded Cotinga (Cotinga maculata), is on the Endangered Species List. S) under the Proceeds of Crime Act – BBC News, 2011.
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