The Last Passenger Pigeon Went Extinct 100 Years Ago

www.wunderground.com/news/passenger-pigeon-went-extinct-100-years-ago-20140831

By Michele Berger
Published: August 31, 2014

Tomorrow marks exactly 100 years since the last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. (She’s pictured above.) It was the end of era for a species once so abundant its flocks were said to darken the sun from midday until the sun went down.

Some scientists are working hard trying to bring back this storied bird. Conservationists are using the centennial as a reminder of our impact on other species. But have Martha and her brethren taught us anything?

At their peak, millions — some argue billions — of passenger pigeons flew together, creating such a ruckus as to make normal conversation a challenge. Yet their numbers diminished rapidly, plunging perilously close to extinction within just a few decades thanks to our voracious appetite for the birds. Then they flamed out completely, the last wild one shot in 1900 and Martha dying 14 years later. “The bird was hunted out of existence,” wrote journalist Barry Yeoman in Audubon magazine, “victimized by the fallacy that no amount of exploitation could endanger a creature so abundant.”

That the species went extinct still shocks the system. Consider their abundance. As Yeoman puts it, nests so weighed down some boughs that they buckled and broke under the strain. Yet technology — namely the railroad and telegraph — meant hunters could hunt the birds not just for their own food, but could also move with the flocks and sell their meat for commercial gain.

•••••

“Martha is receiving plenty of eulogies this year,” he wrote. “I suggest that our most important eulogy would be to reflect on her species’ once great numbers, on the century that has passed since her death and on the century that begins today. We need to imagine Martha asking us, ‘Have you learned anything from my passing?’”
“Martha is receiving plenty of eulogies this year,” he wrote. “I suggest that our most important eulogy would be to reflect on her species’ once great numbers, on the century that has passed since her death and on the century that begins today. We need to imagine Martha asking us, ‘Have you learned anything from my passing?’”