I heard it told that it was once so populous that it took hours for a flock to pass overhead. Yet now it is no more. It shows that we cannot afford to be complacent over the conservation of species even if they seem numerous at this moment in time
This fall marks the centennial of the death of America’s last Passenger Pigeon. It is one of many species driven into extinction by human action. It seems our ancestors have been killing off other animals far before the Dodo, way back to the era of the Wooly mammoth. But now we seem prepared to mark the next century as our biggest kill ever, hundreds, maybe thousands, of species hang in the balance as we humans add ever more heat and energy to the earth’s environment.
Click here to read piece in today’s “New York Times” by the head of the Cornell Ornithology Lab.
This drawing of the Passenger Pigeon is by pioneer bird artists, Alexander Wilson, who once estaimed more than a billion of the birds flew over his head along the banks of the Ohio River. Just over a hundred years later the bird was gone forever.
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