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IGUANA  •  VOLUME 15, NUMBER 2  •  JUNE 2008 105COMMENTARY

Last week in Alabama, I took my friend Andrew on a field
trip. He wanted to catch a snake and other reptiles and

amphibians, so we turned over logs in the forest, waded up
streams, and slogged along the shorelines of lakes. Among our
captures were Slimy Salamanders, Green Anoles, fence lizards,
and cricket frogs. We even caught a large Yellow-bellied
Watersnake. Anyone who spends time looking for these crea-
tures in the Southeast would eventually find them also, as all are
relatively common in many areas.

But I do not take these species for granted. Just because they
are prevalent today gives no guarantee for the future. Now-extinct
plants and animals have included some that were once very abun-
dant. Revisiting the Passenger Pigeon saga is always a good way to
make us realize we should appreciate and protect what we have.

Early in the 20th century the last surviving Passenger
Pigeon — a species claimed by some to have occurred in greater
numbers than any other bird or mammal for which we have
records — died in captivity. Numbers offered little protection
from extinction, and environmental protection laws came too
late to help.

Passenger Pigeons looked similar to Mourning Doves, but
one distinction, communal nesting, ultimately led to their
downfall as a result of uncontrolled hunting by humans. The
abundance of Passenger Pigeons was documented in many ways.
John James Audubon reported an enormous migrating flock in
Kentucky that was more than a mile wide, closely compact, and
passed overhead during the daylight hours for three full days. He
estimated that more than a billion birds were in the flock.

The largest known nesting site for Passenger Pigeons was
Petoskey, Michigan, where almost every tree limb had at least
one nest. Campsites were set up each year by hundreds of peo-
ple who exploited the communal nesting area. In 1878, the nest-
ing colony was 28 miles long and 4 miles wide. Thousands,
maybe millions, of pigeons were sold during the late 1800s.

Most Passenger Pigeons were used for food, but people also
found other uses for them. More than 20,000 of the docile and
cooperative birds were used as shooting gallery targets on the
Coney Island midway. Passenger Pigeons, despite their millions,
dwindled away over the years as the onslaught continued.
Everyone took the abundant and commonly seen birds for
granted.

One way to capture pigeons was to lure them to a would-
be feeding spot with a decoy, a tame pigeon sitting on a stool.
Upon seeing the “stool pigeon,” passing flocks would land, only
to be captured in a net trap. According to one authority, approx-

imately 10 nettings of about 1,200 Passenger Pigeons each were
made in a day, more than 80,000 being captured in some weeks.
The actual toll was even greater when trapping occurred during
the nesting season, because countless nestlings lost their parents
and starved in the nest as a result.

The extinction of the Passenger Pigeon is a commentary on
a persistent and dangerous attitude of that era, the belief that we
could exploit any natural system to the fullest, without regard
for long-term sustainability. Unfortunately, the attitude exists
even today. The approach of squeezing everything we can out of
natural areas for fast financial gain may be the most costly fea-
ture of free enterprise. The final payment may be far more costly
than anyone anticipated.

By the late 1800s, some people, including a few legislators,
realized that Americans had overextended their exploitation of
the Passenger Pigeon. By the 1900s, laws were being passed to
prevent wholesale killing and trapping of the once most com-
mon of birds. But as is true with many of today’s environmen-
tal laws, the rulings were passed too late, were not stringently
enforced, and left too many loopholes. No one can be sure when
and where the last Passenger Pigeon died in the wild. But the
last known lonely Passenger Pigeon died in captivity on
September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo.

The next time you hear a Bullfrog, smell a Wax Myrtle, or
see a Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, stop and appreciate it. Although
they are common today, let’s not let them become the Passenger
Pigeons of tomorrow. Let’s support protection of natural habitats.

C O M M E N T A R Y

Let’s Not Be Complacent 
About The Obvious1

J. Whitfield Gibbons

Savannah River Ecology Lab, Aiken, South Carolina

1 Reprinted with permission by the author and Partners in
Amphibian & Reptile Conservation (www.parcplace.org).




