The Great Avian Die-Off: Two Reports Point to Grim Future for US Birds

Monday, 15 September 2014 12:34
By Patrick Glennon, Truthout | News Analysis

Billions to None

Many Americans living today cannot conceive just how innumerable the passenger pigeon was. Until the late 19th century, the species' numbers were biblical in proportions. It flew in flocks up to a billion strong, stretching for hundreds of miles and blackening the sky with its immensity. For people living at the time, the prospect of such a creature becoming extinct would probably have been equally hard to conceive.

But it happened.

In September 1914 - a hundred years ago this September - the last passenger pigeon died in captivity in Cincinnati. The last confirmed wild passenger pigeons were shot down over a decade earlier, in 1902. Over the course of several decades, a creature that once comprised up to 40 percent of the continental bird population ceased to be.