For one species to
mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun.
To love what was
is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons.
Aldo
Leopold, 1947
One
hundred years ago today, the world lost the last passenger pigeon – a bird
named Martha – who lived at the Cincinnati Zoo and had never known life in the
wild. This was a species that had once
darkened the skies; the peak population in the early to mid-19th
century estimated at 5 billion. Yes,
billion with a “b”. A single colony in
Wisconsin had over 135 million birds in 1871.
As the naturalist and scientist Aldo Leopold noted, the pigeon was no
mere bird, he was a biological storm.
In
1947, Leopold wrote in On a Monument to
the Pigeon,[1]
from which the above quotes were taken. I
invite you to read this lovely, but poignant essay, in which Leopold not only
laments the loss, but questions whether the gains and comforts that industry
brought in exchange were worth the price.
It
was once believed that it was impossible for a species to go extinct. Journalist Elizabeth Kolbert writes of the
evolution of our thinking on this topic in her latest book The Sixth
Extinction: An Unnatural History.[2] We know now that extinction is a natural
phenomenon, that there is a “background rate” of species loss, and that there
have been 5 mass extinction events in the long history of the planet.
So
have we learned anything after the loss of Martha and all of her billions of
relatives? Apparently not much. According to the Center for Biological
Diversity[3]:
Scientists estimate
we’re now losing species at 1,000 to
10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every
day.[4] It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of
all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century.[5]
The
topic of the decline of biodiversity shows up in journals as diverse as Science magazine and The Economist. Many believe, as Kolbert’s book title alludes
to, that the planet is now facing the 6th mass extinction. This time, however, the cause is us.
Later
this semester, Dr. David Blockstein will be on campus to talk about Lessons from
the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon a Century Ago. We will also be participating in
the Fold-the-Flock origami
project (http://foldtheflock.org/)
and showing the film From Billions to None commemorating the loss of this bird that once were a living wind that
shook the trees. We invite you to join
us in reflecting upon our impact on the planet.
For further
reading:
From John Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
From John Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
From Elizabeth Kolbert:
[1] Available at http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/dott_c/bio%20250-swecol/Activities/On%20a%20Monument%20to%20the%20Pigeon.pdf
[2] 2014, Published
by Henry Holt and Company.
[4] Chivian, E. and
A. Bernstein (eds.) 2008. Sustaining life: How human health depends
on biodiversity. Center for Health and the Global Environment. Oxford
University Press, New York.
[5] Ibid.
and Thomas, C. D., A. Cameron, R. E. Green, M. Bakkenes, L. J. Beaumont, Y. C.
Collingham, B. F. N. Erasmus, M. Ferreira de Siqueira, A. Grainger, Lee Hannah,
L. Hughes, Brian Huntley, A. S. van Jaarsveld, G. F. Midgley, L. Miles, M. A.
Ortega-Huerta, A. Townsend Peterson, O. L. Phillips, and S. E. Williams. 2004.
Extinction risk from climate change. Nature 427: 145–148.
