Wednesday 11 July 2012

Remember Martha, The Last Passenger Pigeon On World Population Day 11 July

Remains of the last wild passenger pigeon at Cincinnati Zoo






Dear Friends, Martha, The Last Passenger Pigeon(Bird) was Milestone for Over Population and Aware us to Save Environment... Our Life is depend on Whole World Environment... If We don't worry about Environment and think only about Mankind than We will also put in Worst Situation like Passenger Pigeon which also were around 7 billion.

So Please Read History of Passenger Pigeon and Save Environment...

The Passenger Pigeon or Wild Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was a bird that existed in North America until the early 20th century when it became extinct due to hunting and habitat destruction. The species lived in enormous migratory flocks. One sighting in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mile (1.61 kilometres) wide, 300 miles (483 kilometres) long, and taking 14 hours to pass a single point with number estimates in excess of 3.5 billion birds in the flock. That number, if accurate, would likely represent a large fraction of the entire population at the time.

Some estimate that there were 3 billion to 5 billion Passenger Pigeons in the United States when Europeans arrived in North America. Others argue that the species had not been common in the Pre-Columbian period, but their numbers grew when devastation of the American Indian population by European diseases led to reduced competition for food.

The species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world during the 19th century to extinction early in the 20th century.At the time, Passenger Pigeons had one of the largest groups or flocks of any animal, second only to the Rocky Mountain locust.

Some reduction in numbers occurred because of habitat loss when the Europeans started settling further inland, especially as it was accompanied by mass deforestation and conversion of habitat to farming. The primary factor emerged when pigeon meat was commercialized as a cheap food for slaves and the poor in the 19th century, resulting in hunting on a massive and mechanized scale. There was a slow decline in their numbers between about 1800 and 1870, followed by a catastrophic decline between 1870 and 1890. Martha, thought to be the world's last Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo... 


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