In the last half of the nineteenth century, Western scientists expected the global extinction of large game animals as a consequence of encroaching human activities, especially land-intensive practices like farming and ranching. Extinction was seen as the inevitable, if lamentable, byproduct of humanity’s steady advance. In other words, the permanent demise of some species was a pity, but the loss was a small price to pay to maintain the pace of progress. Animals that went extinct were simply outcompeted in the struggle for survival. Museum zoologists of this era practiced salvage zoology. Their role was to secure the remnants of these threatened animals – skins, skeletons, eggs, nests and whole animals – while they could still be acquired, and preserving them as museum specimens for all time. The rationale behind salvage zoology was clear: certain animals were doomed to extinction by the unrelenting spread of Western civilization. Zoologists, therefore, were obligated to harvest their specimens and keep them in museum collections. Museum zoologists in the 1890s were motivated more by the potential loss of scientific information than they were by the loss of species. Museums would have to act quickly, for the pace of extinction was quickening and many believed that the window of opportunity for collecting specimens would not remain open for long. An additional impetus for the fervent collecting ethos was a burgeoning movement to protect endangered animals in the late nineteenth century, which was seen by museum zoologists as an unfortunate impediment to collections-building.
