Jack Miner - Miner's Banding Practice

Miner's Banding Practice

Perhaps Miner’s most significant contribution to the conservation movement was his practice of banding ducks and geese. Although his son claims that Jack was the first person to band birds in North America, it had actually been introduced by American Leon J. Cole several years earlier. Miner had begun banding ducks and geese in August, 1909. He banded his first duck with a hand-stamped aluminum band, which was recovered five months later in Anderson, South Carolina, constituting the first complete banding record. His bird tags quoted scripture: "Keep yourselves in the love of God—Jude 1-21" and "With God all things are possible—Mark 10-27". The inclusion of scripture on his bands was again indicative of the influence of Miner’s faith on his conservation methods. Indeed, in an entry titled “Birds as Missionary Messengers,” Miner describes Canadian geese as just that, recounting a visit by a missionary from the Canadian North who had been given bands from the local Inuit for interpretation and of a letter sent to him from inmates in an Arkansas prison who had taken interest in the unique method of banding. This unconventional method of banding, it is suggested, helped generate increased interest and participation in the project. Miner’s method of banding, however, was at odds with the attempt to standardize bird-banding practices by the American Bird Banding Association. Indeed, in spite of external pressure, the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation did not adopt the standardized methods until after his death.

Though he cannot be credited with pioneering the process, Jack Miner’s impact on bird banding was significant. His unique methods of banding and his celebrity status helped to popularize a practice that was in its infancy at the time. The thousands of subsequent bird taggings over the following years produced copious data that would help to establish the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, representing an agreement between six nations making it unlawful to capture, sell, or kill certain migratory birds.