Chapter 2 explores the development of the seal industry in the period c.1870–1914 and assesses its ecological impact. Long prized for its luxurious coat, the fur seal had already been wiped out in the southern Pacific Ocean through indiscriminate culling; by the 1880s, it was also under threat in the Bering Sea. Anxious to prevent its extinction, the US Government looked for ways to limit the slaughter, introducing quotas for the number of seals that could be killed each year and banning ‘pelagic sealing’ (the hunting of seals in the sea). The chapter considers the wider diplomatic clashes that resulted from the decline of the fur seal population and the complications surrounding animal protection legislation, particularly when the animal in question lived in the ocean and crossed territorial boundaries. It also charts the growing humanitarian qualms over sealing, typically expressed in graphic accounts of innocent seals being skinned alive.

The nineteenth century witnessed the first major wave of concern for the survival and welfare of wild animals and the first stirrings of an international conservation movement. In the short term, these measures largely succeeded. None of the animals discussed in this book became extinct before 1914, despite fears for their survival, and several species were brought back from the brink by effective conservation legislation, the creation of viable substitutes and changing consumer habits. In the long term, the legacy of turn-of-the-century conservation measures has been more mixed. Some of our species have made a spectacular recovery, while others have succumbed to new, even more serious, threats, in many cases due to a growing consumer demand for their products in East Asia. To conclude this study, therefore, it seems appropriate to bring the stories of our animals up to date and ask what the long-term impact of exploitation and conservation has been. Are egrets, fur seals and African elephants doing better today than they were in 1900, or are they once again in trouble? To what extent do nineteenth-century precedents continue to influence contemporary conservation measures?

Chapter 1 examines the craze for birds’ plumage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and assesses its severe environmental impact. A product of new manufacturing techniques, changing tastes and expanding commercial networks, the plumage trade was big business. It provided stylish headgear for women in Europe and the USA and drew on a global workforce of hunters, merchants and milliners. It was also, however, a highly controversial industry that attracted searing criticism from conservationists and humanitarians. The chapter traces the rise and fall of the trade in feathers, and explores the ethical and ecological implications of this arresting but destructive fashion. It looks, too, at the organisations that emerged to protect endangered birds and the challenges they faced in changing laws and attitudes.

Chapter 5 focuses on four animal products valued for their scent: musk, civet, ambergris and bear’s grease. Musk was an extremely pungent substance extracted from a ‘pod’ belonging to a species of Himalayan deer. Civet was secreted by the animal of the same name and imported from Indonesia and later Ethiopia (then Abyssinia). Ambergris was ‘the morbid secretion of the spermaceti whale’ and could be found washed up on the shore or floating on the surface of the ocean. Bear’s grease was imported from Russia and widely used as a hair restorative in the early nineteenth century. The chapter examines how all of these products were obtained, processed and used and assesses their changing value and popularity. It emphasises both the ecological and humanitarian concerns associated with the harvesting of animal perfume and the persistent issue of adulteration, which repeatedly brought the authenticity of musk, civet and bear’s grease into question.

Chapter 3 examines one of the most high-profile and widely used animal products of the Victorian era: ivory. Employed to make all manner of consumer goods, ivory was heavily sought after in the nineteenth century and was worked on an industrial scale. In the early nineteenth century, much of the ivory consumed in Europe came from historical stockpiles, gathered over centuries by African societies and purchased – or more often seized – by Arab traders for sale on the international market. By the 1870s and 1880s, however, these stockpiles had been exhausted, and elephants began to be slaughtered in large numbers for their tusks – with devastating consequences for the species. The chapter explores the complex networks that brought ivory from the African savannah to the cutlers of Sheffield and piano-makers of London and considers the severe environmental impact of the ever increasing demand for ivory. It goes on to examine the measures taken to protect the African elephant, which ranged from hunting licences and game reservations to export bans on underweight tusks. The final part of the chapter assesses various schemes to domesticate the African elephant, converting it from a supplier of ivory to a beast of burden.

Chapter 4 focuses on alpaca wool – a novel South American fibre that first entered British markets in the mid-1830s. Already widely used in Peru, alpaca wool first took off in Britain in 1836, after the woollen manufacturer Titus Salt discovered a bag of the fibre while walking through the docks in Liverpool. It was imported in increasing quantities from Peru in the 1840s and 1850s and used for the manufacture of shawls, cloth, ladies’ dresses and umbrellas. Charting the alpaca’s journey from the Andes to the outback, the chapter considers why contemporaries set so much store by the animal and how they went about appropriating it. It assesses how increased access, new technologies and new markets made alpaca wool viable and profitable as a luxury fabric and examines the transcontinental relationships that brought alpaca fibre, and later living alpacas, to Britain and its colonies. The chapter also emphasises the important local and regional dynamics of alpaca naturalisation, and the ways in which alpacas infiltrated wider discussions about identity, free trade and biopiracy. It concludes with a study of the alpaca’s wild relative, the vicuña, hunted to the point of extinction for its coveted fleece.

In 1894, a journalist published an article in The Standard advocating the establishment of a kangaroo farm in England. Over the course of several pages he enumerated the multiple benefits to be gained from acclimatising this antipodean marsupial, whose hide produced ‘excellent leather’ for making boots and gloves, whose thighs ‘taste much like those of the reindeer’, and whose tail made ‘a rich and most delicious soup’. Despite understandable fears to the contrary, the journalist insisted that kangaroos would do well in similar terrain to sheep and were ‘sufficiently hardy animals to withstand even the trying variability of our English winters’. He also claimed that they would require comparatively little looking after, ‘[a]ccommodation in the shape of open shedding’ providing ‘sufficient shelter to keep the animals in health’ and a seasonal supply of ‘hay and other food’ meeting their dietary needs. Although its proponent’s primary concern was profitability, the scheme was potentially timely, as kangaroo numbers were rapidly decreasing in Australia due to overhunting and competition with sheep. Writing just five years earlier, another journalist had reported: ‘Large quantities of kangaroos are killed for the sake of the skin, which has become fashionable as a material for the making of boots, shoes and other articles, and unless this indiscriminate slaughter is stopped the kangaroo will soon have shared the fate of the dodo.’

Chapter 6 shifts the focus from animals exploited for clothing and scent to exotic pets – living fashion accessories. The chapter charts the growing trade in monkeys, parrots, tortoises and other foreign species and explores the practicalities and emotional dynamics of keeping exotic species. It highlights the significant ecological implications of the exotic animal trade and the uncertain legal status of exotic pets, which were not formally protected from abuse until 1900.

In 1899, a Mrs A. C. Tracy wrote to The Animals’ Friend requesting advice on ‘Humane Dress’. As she explained, ‘Last winter I had, on two or three very cold days, to wear sealskin and bear alike; this year I want to avoid that, but being very far from strong, I shall be made to wear them, unless some neck wrap is in place equally warm.’ While several fur substitutes were already on the market, Mrs Tracy was yet to be convinced by the ones she had tried, rejecting ostrich feather boas, which were ruined by the ‘damp and fogs’, along with ‘woollen “clouds”, scarves, or any ugly or unfashionable article’. Indeed, she had ‘a stiff neck now from want of a warm necklet, and several ladies whom I have persuaded to give up furs have asked me what to do’.

When individuals sign on to a DNA ancestry test, they understand that the company will undertake an analysis of certain segments of their genome, called ancestry information markers (AIMs). These segments can, under proper analysis, reveal their genetic descent from certain regions of the world.