A Message From Martha

A Message From Martha is the title of a book recently published by Bloomsbury; written by Mark Avery it catalogues the demise of the Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius. Mark writes that we should remember the passenger pigeon because of the largest-scale human-caused extinction in history. 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. But for its extinction from a population of more than 5 billion birds, in the early to mid 19th century, to zero in 1914. 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 Northern USA 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 midcentury 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.

Martha was the last to die. She was thought to be 29 years old and had never lived in the wild. She is now in the Smithsonian.

At times I found myself reading Avery's book with a lump in my throat. How could this happen? Or be allowed to happen? The statistics on population size, breeding colonies, roosts and migration flocks are simply mind-boggling, completely dwarfing anything we can see today. The Passenger Pigeon was capable of flying at 60 m.p.h. Imagine a flock recorded as being a mile wide, flying overhead for four hours, blanking out the sun - a flock 240 miles long. It stretches the bounds of credulity. And yet so it was.

John Fitzpatrick of Cornell Lab for Ornithology said: We need to imagine Martha asking us, “Have you learned anything from my passing?” Timely conservation action really does work, even for species that have reached alarmingly low numbers. The word 'timely' though, needs to be emphasised. It is easy to say that the Turtle Dove will not become the new Passenger Pigeon - but can we be sure?

I would suggest that 'A Message From Martha' is required reading for anyone interested in conservation and biodiversity and the inevitable fate of many of our endangered species if we don't act now.