CRITICISM RETHINKING EXTINCTION Toward a less gloomy environmentalism By James K. Boyce little more than a hundred and what happened to the bird tells After her death, Martha was frozen yearsA ago, a bird named Martha, the us much about what happened—and in a 300-pound block of ice and last surviving passenger pigeon, died is still happening— to us. shipped to the Smithsonian Institu- in the Cincinnati Zoo. Her death was Tourists came from near and far to tion, in Washington. Her internal or- remarkable in the annals of extinction see Martha after George’s death. The gans were removed and preserved in not only because we know its precise the museum’s “wet collections,” and her date—September 1, 1914—but also skin was stuffed and mounted for dis- because only decades earlier the pas- play. In 1977, when the Cincinnati Zoo senger pigeon had been the most opened a passenger-pigeon memorial, abundant bird on earth. Martha’s de- Martha was flown in for the dedication mise helped to transform American ceremony. She traveled first class. beliefs about our relationship with na- The species at greatest risk for extinc- ture, and the bird became an icon in tion tend to be small, geographically the environmental movement, which isolated populations: of the 140 docu- was emerging just as she died. mented bird extinctions since the six- Among the many billions of pas- teenth century, 133 were species found senger pigeons who predeceased only on islands. The passenger pigeon Martha was her cage mate, George, was different. Unlike, say, the black who died in 1910. The pair were mamo, which was endemic to the island named after Martha and George of Molokai in the Hawaiian archipelago Washington. In the century that and went extinct around the same time, separated the first First Lady from the the pigeon had a range that covered last passenger pigeon, the American most of the United States and Canada economy went through a profound east of the Rockies, north of the Gulf transformation. The country’s popu- of Mexico, and south of Hudson Bay. lation increased more than tenfold, And its sheer numbers were almost and average income more than qua- aerial displays of passenger pigeons beyond belief. drupled. Only 6 percent of Ameri- had astonished their parents and The ornithologist Alexander Wil- cans lived in cities when Martha grandparents, but at the zoo they son, writing at the dawn of the nine- Washington died, in 1802. In 1914, found a pathetic creature with teenth century, described a flock the number was closer to 50 percent. “drooping wings, atremble with the crossing the Ohio River: The passenger pigeon’s extinction palsy of extreme old age,” in the was bound up with these changes, words of a reporter. To dissuade the A column, eight or ten miles in public from flinging sand at her to length, would appear from Ken- James K. Boyce teaches economics at the make her move, the zoo keepers roped tucky . steering across to Indiana. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. off her cage. The leaders of this great body would A portrait of Martha, the last passenger pigeon © Paul D. Stewart/Science Source CRITICISM 67 sometimes gradually vary their course, Wilson estimated the number of was just one flock; at any given time until it formed a large bend, of more pigeons in the flock using its density, several were likely to have existed than a mile in diameter, those behind breadth, speed, and the time it took on the continent, plus a scattering tracing the exact route of their prede- to pass overhead, and came up with of smaller groups and individuals. cessors. This would continue some- times long after both extremities were a count of 2,230,272,000. In Birds A. W. Schorger, whose 1955 mono- beyond the reach of sight, so that the and People (2013), Mark Cocker, a graph on the passenger pigeon is the whole, with its glittery undulations, British naturalist, concludes that most exhaustive— some might say marked a space on the face of the while this was probably an overesti- obsessive— assemblage of information heavens resembling the windings of a mate, Wilson had undoubtedly seen about the species, reckoned that its to- vast and majestic river. “well over a billion birds.” And that tal population when Europeans first 68 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2015 Falling Bough, by Walton Ford. Courtesy the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City reached America was 3 to 5 billion. inspire not only awe but also dread. words about the approach of the mil- To put this number in perspective, the When a flock appeared in Columbus, lennium, and several dropped on current worldwide population of rock Ohio, in the spring of 1855, and blot- their knees and prayed.” doves— what most people recognize as ted out the sun, “Children screamed The birds roosted and nested in pigeons— is around 260 million. and ran for home,” according to an enormous colonies. The largest on re- The passenger pigeon is held in account published years later in the cord, found in central Wisconsin in tender regard by environmentalists Columbus Dispatch. “Women gath- 1871, extended for 850 square miles. today, but it is worth pausing to ered their long skirts and hurried for As many as 300 birds would alight in imagine the birds in their heyday. the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A a single tree, shattering trunks and The majestic rivers in the sky could few people mumbled frightened branches with an effect that was CRITICISM 69 likened to that of a tornado or hurri- lost species: the mastodon and the As Elizabeth Kolbert recounts in cane. The clearings the pigeons creat- mammoth. By 1812, when he pub- The Sixth Extinction (2014), Cuvier’s ed were soon populated by species that lished a landmark four-volume trea- discovery of extinction opened the did not thrive in dense forest. The fuel tise on fossil animals, he and others door to Darwin’s discovery of evolu- buildup from broken limbs increased had identified forty- nine vanished tion. If old species could disappear, the intensity of fires. Pigeon excre- species, including a cave bear, a pyg- maybe new species could emerge. Dar- ment altered the nutrient balance of my hippopotamus, and a pterodactyl. win’s theory of natural selection put the soil. The birds’ heavy consump- Cuvier’s discovery touched off a the two processes together. In Kolbert’s tion of red-oak acorns is believed to revolution in our understanding of words, “Extinction and evolution were have tilted the composition of eastern nature that is still, in some ways, in- to each other the warp and weft of forests in favor of white oaks. In these complete. In the years that followed life’s fabric.” But Darwin, like Lyell, be- respects, the passenger pigeon was a his treatise, debate raged over the lieved that the process of extinction keystone species, which helped shape causes of extinction. Cuvier believed was so gradual as to be practically im- the ecosystems of east- that extinctions were the result of perceptible. The idea that a mass ex- ern North America. planetary catastrophes, a view com- tinction could happen in our own patible with the Bible’s great deluge. time, and that we could cause it, re- e now know that 99.9 percent Within a few decades, however, an al- quired a mental leap that ofW all species that ever existed are ex- ternative view propounded by the even Darwin wouldn’t take. tinct. But until the end of the eigh- Scottish geologist Charles Lyell had teenth century, the idea that any spe- won the day. Lyell argued that extinc- he birds that most of us eat today cies had gone extinct was almost tion happened gradually, over millen- areT chickens—lots of them— and tur- unknown. Nature was seen as a steady nia, not in cataclysmic spasms. It keys, with the occasional duck, quail, state, an unchanging tableau, not a pro- would not be until 1980, when a study or pheasant thrown in. So it is some- cess. Thomas Jefferson, whose passions connected the extinction of the dino- thing of a shock to remember that, not included natural history, put it this way: saurs to the impact of an asteroid, so long ago, Americans were happy to that the possibility of abrupt mass ex- eat just about anything with wings. An Such is the economy of nature that tinction was again taken seriously. 1867 inventory of fowl available in the no instance can be produced of her Scientists now recognize that both game markets of New York City and having permitted any one race of her mass and gradual extinctions have oc- Boston featured not only wild turkeys, animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great curred. Mass extinctions get more partridges, and grouse but also robins, work so weak as to be broken. press: five of them are known to have great blue herons, sandpipers, meadow- happened so far, and some say we are larks, blue jays, and snow buntings. The discovery of extinction is gen- now embarking on a sixth, with hu- In season, passenger pigeons were erally credited to Georges Cuvier, mans playing the part of the asteroid. especially plentiful. Alexander Wil- who taught at the Museum of Natu- Yet scientists have calculated that the son reported they were sometimes ral History in Paris and, in his spare Big Five together account for only eaten for breakfast, lunch, and din- time, studied the ancient bones in its 4 percent of the extinctions that have ner.