By the 1920s, market hunters had almost exterminated the snowy aigrette. They killed them for their plumes to sell to the millinery or the hat-making industry. Walker Lake in Arkansas served as a rookery for aigrettes. It became Arkansas’s first Federal bird refuge. Unfortunately, it did not last long. Drainage efforts in the area to make the swampland suitable for agriculture drained Walker Lake a few years after it became a refuge. The birds stopped nesting there. However, before it disappeared, the Federal government made an educational film about Walker Lake. It showed the inhumanity of plume trafficking.
Arkansas Wildlife History 