A quick extinction

I'm going to talk about the Passenger Pigeon (or sometimes called Wild Pigeon). This animal was hunt to extinction not long ago, in nearly the beginning of the 20th century.

As you know, regular Pigeons are one of the most abundant type of bird we see, it adapts fairly well to a urban invironment, and there are some in almost every city with a park, or green space. What's amazing about the Passanger Pigeon, it's how fast it was hunt to extinction, since they were the one of the most abundant bird in the world and the most common in North America in the 19th century, and the last one of them was hunt down only a century later. The bird travelled in very large flocks, usually containing as much as 2 billion birds, wich makes it one of the species that creates the largest flocks in the world. One of the factors that contributed to this birds disappearence, was the loss of habitat when the europeans started to settle in further into the lands, although the primary factor ocurred when pigeon meat started to be sold to the poor and slaves, as cheap food they could afford more easily than pork, or cow meat. After these events, the number of Passenger Pigeons started declining, first slowly, then rapidly into their extinction. Hunters knew that the species were nearly extinct, and still they were hunt to the very last.

Martha, who was though to be the world's last Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1 of the year 1914, in Ohio. Today, a memorial statue of Martha is located next to the mississipi river in Wisconsin. This is a living proof of how much destruction the human race can do to the same nature it lives in.

Passenger Pigeon

Pedro Batim