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• 1 media/Vega_Item0200.jpg 2024-04-23T13:43:51-07:00 Birds of North America (1881) 13 plain 2024-05-24T12:28:00-07:00 How the mighty have fallen. A once large and mighty population of birds across North America have dwindled. The reason for this? Man's greed and self-proclaimed entitlement to resources. In The Birds of North America (1881), evidence of the transformation of North American ecosystems over the past several centuries is striking. Theodore Jasper A.M.M.D tells, for example, of how the passenger pigeon used to swarm the sky in multitudes, so much so that the sky would go dark for days as they migrated. Billions of passenger pigeons would take to the sky back in the early 1800s, until deforestation and exploitation of the species for its meat took a toll on the species. As colonizers migrated and settled into various parts of North America, they began to cut down forests to establish cities. In doing so, the colonizers were also taking away much of the passenger pigeon's habitat, as there could be upwards of 100 passenger pigeon nests on each tree. Passenger pigeons needed their mass population of billions in order to reproduce, as passenger pigeons would only lay one, single egg in each nest. As colonizers settled, they hunted passenger pigeons in mass amounts to sell them for their meat in nearby train stop markets.
  This hunting later turned out to be mass slaughter, as settlers would kill passenger pigeons by the millions. Although many states attempted to preserve the passenger pigeon species by putting limitations on the hunting and trapping of those birds, or even implementing 10-year pauses on the hunting of the birds, many of these efforts and laws were not well enforced by each state. In the end, you will notice that when you walk outside, you will not see any passenger pigeons outside on Saint Mary’s Campus. That is because the last living passenger pigeon died in 1914 at the age of 29 in the Cincinnati Zoo. Her name was Martha and there is a statue at the zoo in her honor. 
  
  Although The Birds of North America was published in the later 1800s, the information inside about the birds is still relevant to this day. I had never heard of the passenger pigeon until I looked at this rare book. As the passenger pigeon went extinct at the hand of Man’s greed and over-consumption of resources, the species has been left in the past. The Birds of North America is a prime example of how not many things change from the past. One thing that has remained constant from then to now is man’s greed and disregard for the importance of nature. 
  Another famous bird mentioned in The Birds of North America is the beloved bald eagle, the national bird of the United States of America. Alas, not even this symbolic species of bird was entirely safe from the grasp of man. The bald eagle was also hunted for sport and monetary gain. Some states would put bounties on bald eagles as they were seen as a nuisance to fishing traps. The bald eagle species dwindled rapidly until there were just 490 birds during the1960s. Oftentimes nature is left defenseless to the consequences of human action. Thankfully the Act of 1940, an act passed to protect the endangered species of bald eagles that is only native to North America, put a stop to the slaughter of the symbolic bird. Bald eagles were placed under the protection of the act and put on an endangered species list. Since then their population has slowly increased and is currently not of any concern.
  
  Although the bald eagle is not extinct, it had a close scare, and yet many humans decide to turn a blind eye when it comes to the consequences of our actions, even if they affect the animals and environment around us. The Birds of North America provides numerous examples of how, if we don’t learn from the mistakes we made in the past and stop the greed of man from spreading today, many more species of birds could also go extinct. If changes are not made, many years from now someone may look at The Birds of North America and have a longer list of birds that have gone extinct, never to be seen again outside of the pages of books or in museums. The passenger pigeon should serve as a warning of what can happen when humans overstep in nature. The recovery of the bald eagle should also serve as a warning, but can also give hope that there are still opportunities for change and to make more conscientious and sustainable decisions with how we, as humans, can coexist with nature.