New York Times - John W. Fitzpatrick: Saving Our Birds - Remembering the Passenger Pigeon - "In the past century, we have built the greatest conservation system in the world." (Not really. The passenger pigeon saga is one the worst episodes of Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons," whereas America's open borders, which assumes the environment will survive infinite redoublings of America's population numbers, will lead to the conclusion, an Easter Island-like environmental and civilizational End Time.)

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Saving Our Birds 

JOHN W. FITZPATRICK





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ITHACA, N.Y. — THE passenger pigeon is among the most famous of American birds, but not because of its beauty, or its 60-mile-an-hour flight speed. Nor is it a cherished symbol of our great country. No, we remember the passenger pigeon because of the largest-scale human-caused extinction in history.

Possibly the most abundant bird ever to have existed, this gregarious pigeon once migrated in giant flocks that sometimes exceeded three billion, darkening the skies over eastern North America for days at a time. No wild bird in the world comes close to those numbers today. Yet 100 years ago this week, the very last pigeon of her kind died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha, and her passing merits our close attention today.

Mercilessly slaughtered by the tens of millions at breeding colonies in the North and at huge wintertime roosts in the South during the post-Civil War era, passenger pigeons were shipped by trainloads to dinner tables in homes and restaurants across the East. Their population fell from biblical numbers at mid-century to tiny, aimless flocks in 1890. By around 1900 the few birds that remained were all in captivity. The last male died in 1910, leaving Martha as a barren relic of past abundance. ...

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