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The Demise Of The Passenger Pigeon

Louis Agassiz Fuertes

On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo. It’s hard to believe there were billions of Passenger Pigeons in the early nineteenth century. By 1900, there were none left in the wild. The last Passenger Pigeon became a symbol of how easily we can devastate a seemingly boundless natural population. But how did it happen? Recent research may shed new light on this extinction.