This September 1 is the 100th anniversary of a landmark event in the history of biodiversity. On that day in 1914, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, Martha - the last surviving passenger pigeon - died at the Cincinnati Zoo. It is extraordinary to know with virtual certainty the day and hour when a species ceases to be a living entity. And it was a stunning development because less than half a century earlier, the passenger pigeon had been the most abundant bird in North America, if not the world. As late as the 1860s, passenger pigeons had likely numbered in the billions, and their population was neither evenly distributed across the landscape nor in any way subtle. These birds had a propensity for forming huge aggregations that are difficult to imagine today. John James Audubon, America's best-known student of birds, recorded a flight of passenger pigeons along the Ohio River in Kentucky that eclipsed the sun for three days. Other accounts, written over the course of three centuries and in several languages, testify to the birds darkening the sky for hours at a time over the major cities of the eastern third of the United States and Canada.
This September 1 is the 100th anniversary of a landmark event in the history of biodiversity. On that day in 1914, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, Martha - the last surviving passenger pigeon - died at the Cincinnati Zoo. It is extraordinary to know with virtual certainty the day and hour when a species ceases to be a living entity. And it was a stunning development because less than half a century earlier, the passenger pigeon had been the most abundant bird in North America, if not the world.
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As late as the 1860s, passenger pigeons had likely numbered in the billions, and their population was neither evenly distributed across the landscape, nor in any way subtle. These birds had a propensity for forming huge aggregations that are difficult to imagine today. John James Audubon, America's best-known student of birds, recorded a flight of passenger pigeons along the Ohio River in Kentucky that eclipsed the sun for three days. Other accounts, written over the course of three centuries and in several languages, testify to the birds darkening the sky for hours at a time over the major cities of the eastern third of the United States and Canada.
At Fort Mississauga, Ontario (located at Niagara on the Lake, about 80 miles from Toronto) in early May of around 1860, Ross King, a major in the British army, witnessed and described in great detail a movement of passenger pigeons that has been calculated at more than two billion birds and, depending on how fast they were flying, could have been as many as 3.7 billion. Yet by 1890, there were probably no more than several thousand of the pigeons left, and the last wild bird was shot on April 3, 1902 in Laurel, Indiana. The rapidity with which this bird's population went from billions to none was, I believe, unprecedented. And it holds The 1871 nesting of passenger pigeons in Wisconsin likely involved 136 million adult birds. some important lessons today for a world where increasing numbers of species are becoming extinct.
At the time of Martha's death, the depletion of so much abundance in such a short time was difficult for people to accept and explain. There were the deniers who claimed the hordes of pigeons all moved to South America where they changed their appearance to elude their pursuers. Some, like Henry Ford, accepted their extinction but thought the birds had drowned in the Pacific Ocean as they fled to freedom. More plausible theories included disease, which although not impossible is without any evidence at all, as large numbers of dead birds were never found (unlike caves today filled with dead bats, the victims of white-nose syndrome).
Passenger Pigeon image via Shutterstock.
Read more at Yale Environment360.
