Episode 3: Parakeet Panic
When invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s, the government decided it needed to kill them all. Today: The offbeat panic about wild parrots, and a history of anxieties about population growth.
KEY SOURCES
New York State Archives. New York (State). Governor. Public information photographs, 1910-1992. Series 13703-82, Box 4, No. 10380_047
Parrot Culture: Our 2,500-Year-Long Fascination With the World’s Most Talkative Bird by Bruce Thomas Boehrer
www.brooklynparrots.com, Steve Baldwin.
Trash Animals: How We Live With Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive, and Unwanted Species by Charles Mitchell
The Limits To Growth (book), by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, & William W. Behrens III
The Limits To Growth (film)
“Shakespeare’s Starlings: Literary History and the Fictions of Invasiveness” by Lauren Fugate & John MacNeill Miller. Environmental Humanities (2021) 13 (2): 301-322.
“Meddling With Nature: The Acclimatization Movement and Central Park Starlings” by Jaap Haarskamp. New York Almanack.
European Starling, New York Invasive Species Information
State Acts to Wipe Out Monk Parakeet: State Moves Against Monk Parakeet
By HAROLD FABER. New York Times (1923-Current file); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 07 Apr 1973: 1.
New York Plans Drive to Destroy Monk Parakeets Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Los Angeles, Calif. [Los Angeles, Calif]. 08 Apr 1973: 11
“The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1998)” By Roy Beck (bio) and Leon Kolankiewicz (bio) Journal of Policy History Volume 12, Number 1, 2000 Penn State University Press
The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future by Paul Sabin
Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population by Matthew Connelly
“The Monk Parakeet: A Jailbird Who Made Good” by Nicholas Lund, Audubon.
“Of Birds, Guano, and Man: William Vogt’s Road To Survival” by Maureen A. McCormick. 2005.
“Population Cycles, Disease, and Networks of Ecological Knowledge” by Susan D. Jones. Journal of the History of Biology (2017) 50:357–391
“Quiet Village” by Martin Denny
“Tiki Takeover: Veteran Escapism and the Rise of 1950s Polynesian Pop”
“Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica” by Phil Ford, Representations (2008).