How billions of birds disappeared
A century ago, passenger pigeon became extinct in blink of an eye
WASHINGTON — It was the moment that humanity learned we had the awesome power to erase an entire species offthe face of the Earth in the scientific equivalent of a blink of an eye: The passenger pigeon went from billions of birds to extinct before our very eyes.
It was one bird’s death after many. But a century ago, Martha, a red-eyed, gray and brown bird famous as the last surviving passenger pigeon, keeled over, marking an extinction that shook science and the public.
Now, a century later, Martha’s back, in a way. She is being taken out of the file cabinets of history in a new Smithsonian Institu- tion exhibit this month, reminding the public of her death, and of other species that have gone extinct because of man. A new scientific study this week shows how pigeon populations fluctuated wildly but how people ultimately killed off the species.
And some geneticists are even working on the longshot hope of reviving the passenger pigeon from leftover DNA in stuffed birds.
“Here was a bird like the robin that everybody knew, and within a generation or two it was gone — and we were its cause,” Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm said.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the passenger pigeon was the most abundant bird species on Earth. In 1866 in Ontario, just one flock, 300 miles long and one mile wide, darkened the skies for 14 hours as they flew by overhead. Unlike the domesticated carrier pigeon used for messages, these were wild birds.
They were easy to catch because they stayed together. They were considered a poor man’s food; domestic workers complained about eating too much passenger pigeon.
“Nobody ever dreamed that a bird that common could be brought into extinction that quickly,” said University of Minnesota evolutionary biologist Bob Zink.
Examination of the passenger pigeon’s genetic code shows that their population varied regularly from as muchas 5 billion to as few as tens of millions, said a study co-authored by Zink in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences released Monday. Still, the chief causes of the extinc- tion — cutting down Eastern U.S. forests and hunting — were man-made, Zink said.
By 1900, there were no passenger pigeons left in the wild. By 1914, there was just 29-year-old Martha at the Cincinnati Zoo. People lined upto see her. Shewas a star.
Then, on Sept. 1, 1914, Martha was found lying on the bottom of her cage. The passenger pigeon was now extinct. It had gone from billions of birds to zero in about one century, probably less.
For the last 15 years, she has been filed away at the Smithsonian, along with another stuffed pigeon named George, older and unrelated.
On Monday, they were separated. George was put back in storage and a prettied-up Martha was ready for a comeback.
The exhibit on her extinction and the 100th anniversary starts June 24 at the Smithsonian.