Marta, the Passenger Pigeon Death Anniversary: 100 Years of Extinction

Today is the day of ‘Marta’, the last Passenger Pigeon, which died 100 years ago on September 1 when it was just 29-year-old.

Over a century ago, these unique variety of birds offered enticing views to the nature lovers as they flocked together in millions in the sky over the United States and Canada and now they have reduced to none, thanks to the excessive human intervention.

Almost all of us were not even born to enjoy their mesmerizing beauty. But some of the historians and environmentalists who were fortunate enough to capture their beauty with their naked eyes just call them a real natural beauty.

Doug Gross, supervisor of the Endangered and Nongame Birds Section of Pennsylvania Game Commission, said that there was a time when the passenger pigeon was most abundant bird in North America. The process of its extinction began in 1800s due to the unregulated subsistence and market hunting.

Passenger pigeons were killed in such large numbers that the train cars were filled with their carcasses. The hunters not even spared their youngsters called squabs.

The human intervention was so high that whenever a nesting colony was located, the squabs were captured into barrels to be served as delicacy across the cities.

Famous writer and environmentalist Mark Avery, in his book ‘A Message from Martha: The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and Its Relevance Today’ said, “We lost passenger pigeon and much of the rest of North America’s wildlife through ignorance, but we can’t use that excuse today and we still plunder the world’s natural beauty. Now we can see, clearly, what we are doing.”

According to Avery, the major contributor to the extinction of these birds was deforestation or clearing of forests, construction of rail road, telegraph service, better firearms and mass hunting.

Environmentalists say the time has arrived when we should learn from our mistakes and wake up to the message of Martha to save the nature and its beauty.

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Nancy Young

When I was younger I used to spend almost all of my free time playing computer games. My mom and dad would go mental over this. “You’re never going to do anything with your life if you are going to play games all day” they used to say. What was even more unusual was the fact that I played more games than most of the guys in my friend group. Looking back, I have to admit that I probably played a bit too much, but I also learned a lot of great things. When I turned 20 I decided that it was high-time to make some money of my own, but the only jobs I could get were that of waitress or cashier. How exciting. After several excruciating months of serving tables I had a great idea: since I love gaming so much, why don’t I write about it? That’s when I started doing small writing projects on Elance. Eventually, I got an offer for a part-time job. During that time I learned all about content marketing strategies and how search engines work. I started writing about various topics such as technology, health and lifestyle and discovered that I was actually good at it. On November 24, 2014, I became part of the ArgyllFreePress team.