Article published in the Far West Almanac Dec 2008

We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

Kurt Vonnegut

With 46 million turkeys eaten at Thanksgiving (690 million pounds of flesh), and 22 million at Christmas, the turkey literally becomes a part of us during holiday season. The bird is unique to America, and examining our relationship to it throughout our history demonstrates the schizophrenic nature of how we interact with the ecosystem that supports us. An apt example of this is Sarah Palin’s speech after her turkey “pardoning” ceremony, given in front of a bloody turkey slaughtering tub: youtube

A Bolivian friend bought to my attention the Presidential Turkey Pardoning event that takes place prior to Thanksgiving. Despite determined attempts to find out what the turkey is being pardoned for, I found nothing, proven or alleged, about crimes committed by turkeys. I was excited to read an article about a turkey attacking President Bush, causing him to be evacuated from the White House, but soon noticed the source was The Onion and therefore highly unreliable.

The popular notion that the Presidential Turkey Pardoning ceremony was started by President Truman is also malarkey. It has been suggested President Kennedy triggered the event when he spontaneously declined to eat the turkey given him by the California Turkey Advisory Board. This happened a couple days before his assassination, leading me to wonder if links between this group and the murder have been explored. Actually, this bizarre scape-turkey ceremony was begun by President George H. W. Bush in 1989, and will hopefully be discontinued – even turkeys should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Wild turkeys are a very different bird than the ones currently carved up for the pleasure of family and friends, and were abundant in the 1600s. By the 1930s, less than 30,000 wild turkeys remained in the country, a result of extravagant hunting and clear-cutting of forests. In 1937, the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act was passed, taxing hunting equipment and putting the dollars into conservation and habitat enhancement programs. The National Wild Turkey Federation was established and after unsuccessfully attempting to release pen-raised birds into the wild, brought back wild turkeys with trap and transfer programs initiated in the 1950s. The main program began with nine wild turkeys! This program was supported by hunters as well as conservationists, as a result it is perhaps the most successful conservation program in history. Today there are more than 7 million wild turkeys. This is an outstanding example of what can be accomplished if we all work together.

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