About this episode

The episode discusses the extinction of passenger pigeons and the subsequent conservation efforts in America.

In America’s first hundred years, the animal you were most likely to see was a passenger pigeon. And you saw a lot of them. Flocks were so numerous they literally blotted out the sun for days and their combined weight snapped the branches of entire forests where they roosted. Yet by 1914, the last specimen, a female named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo, marking the complete extinction of what had been North America's most abundant bird numbering in the billions just decades earlier. Early Americans assumed the nation's bird populations were infinite, so market hunters fashioned homemade cannons to blast sleeping ducks by the dozens, "pigeoneers" shipped passenger pigeons by the trainload to city restaurants, and feather hunters shot rare birds worth more than their weight in gold so Gilded Age women could wear plumes in their hats. What followed was an unlikely coalition of bird-lovers like Roosevelt, gunmakers, business titans, and brave game wardens who transformed American conservation. They couldn’t save the passenger pigeon, but they saved other species from extinction, like the Canada Goose and the trumpeter swan. Today's guest is James H. McCommons, author…

People in this episode

Host: History Unplugged

Guest: James H. McCommons

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cincinnati Zoo, Migratory Bird Treaty Act

Places: Pelican Island, America

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