Passenger Pigeon
"The passenger pigeon needs no
protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its
breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and
elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the
myriads that are yearly produced." Report of a select committee of the Ohio
Senate in 1857 on a bill proposed to protect Passenger Pigeons. One of the most
noted of extinct animals, passenger pigeons were reduced from numbers in the hundreds of
millions for food.
The Extinct
Passenger Pigeon
Gallery
Carolina Parakeet, Chester A Reed
The Extinct
Carolina Parakeet Gallery
Guadalupe Caracara, Alfred Edmund Brehm
As with many recently extinct animals, this species was
brought to extinction when collectors, including museums, sought rare specimens after
hunters reduced their numbers on the island of Guadalupe, their only home.
Heath
Hen, Chester A. Reed
The Heath Hen was established as
distinct from its relative, the Prairie Chicken in 1885. Correllus State Forest on
Martha's Vineyard was created in 1908 as a Heath Hen Reserve to prevent the bird's
extinction. The last Heath Hen was sighted in 1932 shortly after a grassland fire.
Spectacled
Cormorant, Pallas' Cormorant
Discovered in the Aleutian Islands by
George Steller while exploring with
Vitus Bering in 1741. The Spectacled Cormorant was extinct within
about a century.
