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Show The English Sparrow Immigrates to Utah Ths.. Bglishs pamow fkst', miy~ d UEall ~ vatnadm t to ham h efe athemr! hm-in the spring of 2837 whm the. W w @& ts. lb Walkex bcothes asked- the GitY br& tets. s u ~ & ll dnm cbjants, im- council to pats an - or& ump m& cSLng the pmkd a hunctwd paiw ad re1- d & em ntswciirners. S@& Bp eople p d i ~ t i dh tth e into the Salt Lake City sky. - 8 newsman Sparrows would do more gowd & mharill d reported that British- born settlers were would help conbd " the insm& t h t p1q~ edat seeing ,& liar birds that emi in dad upon the h i t t rees in s u ~ ~ ~ e r . " them " of old thes in the n a a t b m " A hzbn& ed years ago kw people under- As the birds ware freed, pmple were stood ecology ar h e w why the deUci& $; aI- 10 ance of plant and animal life in Utah could be upset by the new arrivals. More importmt from the farmers' point of view, those who had imparted the sparrow seemed ignorant of its feeding habits. Within ten yeas of the arrival of the & st spamws in Utah,. residents of Salt Lake Val-ley began to doubt seriously the vdue ~ f the feathered immigrmts from England. By the spring of l a 6 boys were tmmd lowe with snares a d hipw= to elirnfnak the 65rds. This deed was encouraged by a small bounty. m cash reward, offered for each sparrow head. The boy who killed the largest n u m k of spamows was publicly recoo- d with a. medaL But the birds were liked by % m. These " friends of the nuisance" stapped the destruction of the En&* sparrow in Salt Lake City far a time, By thy fdI of 1886 newggaper headline% were annomcbg that " the sparrow must go." The United States Department a£ Ag-riculture had studied the lhglish sparrow and found that dl d£ ih habits were b d Tbe little, M~ dhs ad not eaterr wmms aad insect pests as the importers had expected. Instead, the spmw has izacrebed and multiplied amazingly, and hagwaxed Eat and saucy, bdt not an a diet of worn. He has lived on grain and fruit to the great disgust and cost of the farmers and o ~ & s t sM. u rk than this, the sparrows haw p v m the friends and pro-tectors of the' iasecis, by driving away the birds which live on w o r n . & a consequ-ence the in~ eet pests ha- ve increased as rapidly as thesparrows im d e & sb5& where & e latter have IocaW. The gavmmeat proposed to min hawks to kill the mmauders. Prablems with the English sparrhw were not unique to the Wasatch Front. This spar-row, Passer domesticus, had been Erst intro-du~ edin to the United States in 1850 in Naw Ynrk and. later, in a number of other cities. The sparrow had Hourished. By 1880' it was declared a nuisance in mm t areas of the coun-try far wasting grain, driving away song birds. and for the way it ravaged green peas. The Indiana State Horticulture Society, for example, passed a resolution at its annual meeting declaring the EngLish sparrow a nuisance and urging its externination, By 1880 the English sparrow had become the subject of legislation in Salt Lake City. This was not an ordinance for theit protection as the Walker bmfhers had originally re-gu~ stedI. n stead. Territorial Governor Cdeb B. West ssigmd into law an act providing bounties for the destruction of certain ani-mals and birds. The new law provided a re-ward of ane- qu~~ toef ra cent for each sparrow head presented to the muntry clerk, Frustrated in the effort to eliminate the English sparrow. me anonymous writer to the editor of the Deseret News jokingly sug-gested a way ta turn this pest, along with the jack rabbit, into a, some af profit for citizens of the tedtmy: kill the pests, can them, and ship them to the eastern market far salem On a serious Ievel, a number of s i - en&& a dt he commissione~ o f agriculhwe had hecome candnced of the significant damage that the birds were doing to the & can agricultural industry. To prevent this happening again, they suggested na-tional legislation to wtrkt eimpartation of foreign birds an< E m a m d Yet, the English sparraw canthued to flourish in Salt Lake Valley despite flipper-s hooting boys. legislation offering bounties for its elimination, national hawk-~ aining programs, and other schemes. In fact, by the end of the nineteenth century Utah residents seemed to be somewhat reluctantly acceptiqg the birds. The Deseret News in 2895 noted a report that the sparrow population in New rark had been reduced to such a low level that caterpillars, lightning bugs, and beetles we2e raising havoc. This moved one Salt Laker to respond that while Utah was net suffering from a lack of sparrows if neverthe-less had a surpIus of the same devastating insects that were plaguing New York. Fed by Utah grain and fruit, the English spwo w had as much interest in the insect pests " as a tramp does for a saw and woodpile-- be doesn't disturb them except it be by acci-dent." Ms. Bewtm is a doctoral candid at^ in history at the Universif y of Utah. |
