the dodo might hold the crown as the most famous extinct animal, and granted, they deserve it. they were the first species that humans acknowledged they had led to the extinction of. that’s a really significant title! but comparatively speaking, the death of a species of fat flightless pigeon with no natural predator on a tiny island isn’t half as horrifying as what happened to passenger pigeons.
the sheer scale at which these birds existed, and their subsequent extinction, is something i cannot wrap my head around. i know what happened – i’ve read novels upon novels about this, i’ve seen the pictures, i know all the details, but the more i think about it the more i realise i can’t possibly process it to its fullest extent because i wasn’t there. i didn’t live through that. i’ll never be able to fully understand how sudden it was.
these birds were over 5 billion strong at their peak. when they travelled, they allegedly blacked out the sun for thirty minutes at a time. they formed rivers in the sky, and there’s art and record of this from dozens of people. it wasn’t just one person’s poetic interpretation. these birds existed in an overwhelming quantity, and no doubt because of that that people took them for granted.
they were plentiful. they were obnoxiously plentiful, and yet humans took them out so cleanly and quickly and efficiently that from this species, from this five billion-strong species, we have only a single picture of a passenger pigeon squab.
these birds faded out of existence in the span of someone’s lifetime.
And now you know why we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It’s not to inconvenience those who whine when you can’t keep a crow feather you found on the ground or a taxidermy owl without papers at an antique shop. It’s because by the time the law was passed in 1918 the commercial hunting of birds was so incredibly destructive that it was already to late for several species, and many others were on the brink.
We have a HUGE abundance of wildlife compared to how many places in the US were by the turn of the 20th century. Not just birds, but mammals and other species. From the MBTA of 1918 to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, all of these and more are there to keep us from doing the same damned thing we did before. Only now we have SO MANY MORE PEOPLE who are sucking up even more habitat and other resources wildlife need.
