Martha, the last of her species, might lose that distinction if scientists have their way

Terry DeMio Cincinnati Enquirer

Published 11:31 AM EDT Aug 30, 2019

The story of Martha the passenger pigeon elicits both nostalgia and remorse for Cincinnati, the city that protected this bird, the last of her species, in a place where conservation is key.

We toast her in a massive showpiece of a mural on East Eighth Street facing Vine. Renowned wildlife artist Charley Harper has immortalized her kind in a seriagraph. The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, which kept Martha comfortable in her last years, hosts a statue in her honor. Children throughout the region are taught about extinction through books about Martha. And parents and grandparents who know about the rise and fall of passenger pigeons tell their little ones about Martha.

But now, these wistful tales are evolving. 

More Marthas may be on the way.

Credit a new field of science called de-extinction biology.

A group of scientists in Sausalito, California, are working on bringing back the passenger pigeon as part of a larger effort to enhance biodiversity through new techniques of genetic rescue of both endangered and extinct animals.

"It's been really amazing," said Ben Novak, lead scientist at Revive & Restore, which is working on the revival of a very similar bird to the passenger pigeon, with the hope of reintroducing it to the forests of eastern North America.

Lest anyone fear that Jurassic Park-like monster passenger pigeons will one day inhabit the earth, no worries.

The de-extinction efforts underway don't really re-create the bird's entire DNA. Instead, scientists start by decoding DNA from extinct passenger pigeons and, through bio-technology, change the DNA code of living band-tailed pigeons to match the passenger pigeon's code. By changing enough of the code, and through tried-and-true conservation practices, scientists hope the new birds look and behave the same way that their historic counterparts did.

Read on

What DNA Says About the Extinction of America’s Most Common Bird ... and its possible resurrection

 NOV 16, 2017

On September 1, 1914, an old, trembling passenger pigeon named Martha died at Cincinnati Zoo. With her demise, her entire species slid into extinction. But in many ways, the species was already gone, for a solitary passenger pigeon is almost not a passenger pigeon at all. This is an animal that existed in gestalt. Its essence was in the flock.

Passenger pigeons were once the most abundant bird in North America, and quite possibly the world. At their peak, there were a few billion of them, traversing the continent in gargantuan, nomadic flocks that would blacken the sky for hours as they passed overhead. Simon Pokagon, a Potawatomi author and leader, described them as “the grandest waterfall of America” and their sound as that of “distant thunder” or “an army of horses laden with sleigh bells.”

And then, people started shooting them. They poisoned them, netted them, gassed them, hit them with sticks. In a matter of decades, the continent’s most common bird has been completely wiped out, down to the last individual. “It’s always astounded me how something could have that large a population and entirely disappear,” says Beth Shapiro from the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Why didn’t tiny populations survive somewhere in refugia? I mean, we are pretty good at murdering things, but how did we kill every one of them?”

Continued  

A Centenary for the Last Passenger Pigeon (Op-Ed)

Steve Zack, Wildlife Conservation Society | August 30, 2014 12:24pm ET

19th-century American painter John James Audubon "was struck with amazement" at the darkened skies caused by the passenger pigeon. The man who would become famous as an artist of nature was, not surprisingly, himself a naturalist. This painting by John James Audubon of a passenger pigeon dates to 1824.

Credit: John James Audubon

Steve Zack is coordinator of Bird Conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). He contributed this article to LiveScience'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. 

Monday is the centenary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. That timing is precise, because we know that the very last bird (Martha, after Martha Washington) died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. It was, without doubt, the most dramatic extinction ever witnessed. 

No other bird has so impressively darkened the skies and stirred wonder and awe in the immensity of its flocks as did the passenger pigeon. The bird was witnessed by John James Audubon, John Muir, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and countless of their peers in early America.

Read more ...

2014: the year of the passenger pigeon

Spare a thought for Martha, the last passenger pigeon, who passed away 100 years ago

Name: Martha

Species: Ectopistes migratorius

Dates: ?–1914

Claim to fame: The last individual of her species

Go visit: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

In the middle of the 19th century, the passenger pigeon was by far the most common bird in the United States, if not the world. It was a species that flocked in mind-boggling numbers, seemingly endless clouds of densely packed birds darkening the skies for hours, sometimes days.

One of the most striking accounts of this phenomenon was recorded by Major W Ross King, who witnessed “an extraordinary flock of birds” in the vicinity of Niagara in 1860.

Continued

Extinct stuffed bird from 50 years ago now missing

Jeff Dankert
Staff Writer

A stuffed passenger pigeon that turned up 50 years ago in La Salle is now missing and this discovery by the News Tribune two weeks has launched a hunt for its whereabouts.

Passenger pigeons once numbered in the billions in Illinois and across eastern North America. The last known wild bird was killed in 1900 in Ohio and the last captive bird died in 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo.

This makes stuffed specimens valuable.

On Jan. 3, 1963, the Daily News-Tribune published a story about a stuffed passenger pigeon at the La Salle-Peru-Oglesby Junior College, which occupied the building now home to La Salle-Peru Township High School, La Salle.

“A mounted specimen of a passenger pigeon was being saved for posterity through the efforts of a zoology instructor at LPO Junior College,” the story said.

Zoology instructor Ed Keiser discovered the bird amid other deteriorating specimens in a display case. The school had no record of its collection or donation. Keiser had it identified by two Illinois ornithologists, Frank Bellrose and William French. They remarked it “was one of the finest specimens they had seen in existence,” Keiser said.

When Keiser found the bird it was incorrectly labeled as a “mourning dove,” he said today.
“I knew it wasn’t a mourning dove,” Keiser said. After he had it identified, he returned it to the display case and that was that.

“I really don’t have any idea,” he said. “I do know it was shown to several people.”

In 1966 La Salle-Peru-Oglesby Junior College changed its name to Illinois Valley Community College and in 1968 moved to its new location near Oglesby. Keiser left before the move.

“It was still there (at LP High School) when I left,” he said.

Keiser, who today is emeritus professor of biology at University of Mississippi, and other staff present at that time said the bird was not brought to the new college building.

“I’m sure no one would have thrown it away,” Keiser said. “It was a very beautiful specimen and everybody who saw it said it was really a fine specimen and I hope it’s not lost.”

There is a science room at the high school full of old stuffed birds but no passenger pigeon. 

Present day LP High School biology teacher Angelique Depenbrock is searching.

“I did scour my rooms twice and the back rooms and all I found was a sparrow and a titmouse bird,” she said.

Keiser thought it might be in Room 321, but this room is no longer used for science and shows no hiding places. Lou Borio, biology teacher at the college until he retired in 1995, said he also remembers the bird in a glass case in Room 321, in a back or side office area, like a storage or supply room.

“That bird was in excellent condition,” Borio said.

Marv Getty, who began teaching biology at the high school in 1970 and left 13 years ago, said he does not recall the pigeon.

“I asked some of my colleagues about that and they said other teachers might have borrowed that,” he said. “They had seen various birds around the building, over in the wood shop and things like that.”

The News Tribune contacted Project Passenger Pigeon with the Chicago Academy of Sciences and its Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Project participants, including Joel Greenberg, are spreading the word and searching known collections.

“I think this search is really cool,” Greenberg said. “There are numerous stories of missing passenger pigeons. And one museum traded two passenger pigeons for a polar bear cub.”

When the NewsTribune contacted Fran Brolley at Illinois Valley Community College, Brolley called up Keiser. Keiser, whose long career has kept him working beyond retirement, was going through keepsakes and came across the 50-year-old newspaper story about the pigeon just as Brolley called him.

“The day Fran called, after 50 years, I happened to pick up that box,” Keiser said. “I had just scanned that picture of me holding the bird. The phone rang and it was Fran. Fifty years, and to the second. I got goose-bumps on the coincidence.”

http://newstrib.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=28&ArticleID=26135