This is a case where the safety of an animal takes priority over a person's desire to exploit them. Feather bans are for the bird's protection. If there were a demand for, say, the feathers of a vulnerable species because people started realizing how cool they are, there is little that can be done against poachers once they get started. And while an individual may be well-intentioned and not trying to be harmful when they pluck a feather off the ground, these bans act as barriers that enable law enforcement to target the illegal movement and sale of animal parts more readily. They're attempting to deny animal abusers and traffickers the excuse, "Oh, well, I foune it on the ground," by making it illegal.
@@MagicalMedic if you want to criticize freedom here in America, there's way more important things you can criticize. Personally, right now I am more concerned about the loss of women's reproductive freedom than I am about wildlife protection laws being too strict for some people. Or, like, our Representatives not listening to us at all when we express public outrage about their choices of how they spend our taxes.
So I can understand it being illegal to harvest feathers from the birds themselves, especially because it'd be very painful. Almost akin to pulling your fingernails or something. Can you explain why it'd be illegal to pick them up off the ground though? I'm very curious behind the logic of the law.
Another comment said this, it's because it's hard to prove that you picked it up from the ground and that you didn't pluck it from the endangered or protected bird directly, usually after killing said bird.
There's 3 main components to the law being as extreme as it is: 1) It's impossible to tell if a feather was plucked from a dead (or live) bird vs shed naturally. 2) People can very easily lie and say they found a naturally shed feather. Back when feathered hats were a big part of fashion this kind of lying happened all the time. This makes it easier to catch poachers. 3) It kills the market for feathers. Birds were being driven to extinction exclusively for their feathers (we're seeing that start to happen with bat oddities today in other countries). By making them illegal to own it drastically reduces demand and forced the market to shift its focus to alternative sources. Like using chicken/duck/turkey feathers from meat/egg birds raised domestically en masse (you can even paint the feathers to look like other bird species 😁 ). Some countries allow for permits, but in the US it's more strict. Which, given how many people comment on my videos that they don't care about the law, I can see why we don't loosen up the law and go that route. Too many selfish people =/
Weirdest thing I have ever heard. So you cant pick up feathers from the ground because there are some people who would actually pluck them from the birds? Its like making stupid laws to protect birds from stupid people, but everyone else suffers also...
That's one part of it. By writing the law this way it makes it way easier to catch poachers. It also killed the market for feathers, which was the most important factor. Birds were being driven to extinction purely because people wanted their feathers. So owning feathers was outlawed. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act has saved a number of bird species that were on the brink of extinction thanks to being written this way.
