A: Because the 100th anniversary of the loss of the world's last passenger pigeon, Martha, is a good time to look back on extinctions in the past and look at things today, to help prevent future extinctions.
Q: Tell us about poor Martha.
A: She lived her final years at the Cincinnati Zoo, where she died in 1914 — the very last of her kind. She was sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where her remains were stuffed, and she is on exhibit today. The passenger pigeon we have on display here in the exhibition is Buttons, who was collected in 1900 in Pike County, Ohio, and for many years was thought to be the last wild passenger pigeon. Then a researcher found two others after Buttons. Now, she's the third-to-last known.
Q: Why the name?
A: She was prepared by an amateur taxidermist who had no glass eyes for the mount, so he used the small buttons they had on womens' shoes back then. One of them is still part of the specimen.
Q: Sure enough. What makes the passenger pigeon a useful symbol of extinctions? Lots of species have disappeared.
A: Well, we note in the exhibit that since the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, over 500 species and subspecies of North American plants and animals have gone extinct. But I think the passenger pigeon is the most dramatic example of the loss of an entire species in our time and country. In the early 19th century, there were 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America — and remarkably, we saw the loss of the entire population within the space one human lifetime. From billions to zero. They were hunted for meat and sport — killed by the thousands, millions and shipped to restaurants in cities. There were so many nobody though they would ever go extinct. But it's a good example of how a species can go from huge numbers to none in a really short period of time — and it alerted us to something that at that time, people really did not think was possible.
Q: It says in the exhibition that the flocks of them would darken the sky.
A: Right. We have this quote from 1855 in Columbus that describes it as "a growing cloud that blots out the sun as it moves toward the city. 'Children screamed and ran for home … women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed.'"
Q: Even given the journalistic hyperbole of the day, that’s pretty Hitchcockian.
A: It is, isn't it? It's an amazing image.
Q: Did anything good come from their extinction?
A: It led the government to create the first laws to protect other species. The federal Migratory Bird Act was passed in 1918, in response to what happened to the passenger pigeon. People suddenly realized that if we could do that to the passenger pigeon, we could do it to other species, as well. It was the first law to protect wildlife. People may tend to think of the later part of the 20th century as the time when a lot wildlife protections came about, since the Endangered Species Act was from the early 1970s. But it got started in 1918.
Q: Do do you think we could have a repeat of what happened to the passenger pigeon today, on such a vast and rapid scale?
A: Maybe not in just that way, because there are pretty effective laws in place now. But we're still at risk — there are still a lot of animals and plants we could lose forever.
Q: What are some examples?
A: Well, right here in Ohio, for instance, we have two rattlesnakes, the timber rattler and the Massasauga rattlesnake, also called the swamp rattler. They both have just small populations left in the wilder, more remote parts of the state. They're listed as Ohio endangered species. There's also the Eastern hellbender, a big salamander that lives in shallow parts of rivers and ponds. There are lots of freshwater clams that are endangered; people don't think of those. Insects, too — beautiful butterflies like the frosted elfin, the graceful underwing and the blue karner, a lovely little thing. We have specimens for people to see.
Q: What does that designation mean exactly?
A: A state law protects them to they can't be collected or harmed, or their nests disturbed. Even us, as a museum, can't collect them without a state permit. We'd even need a permit if somebody found a dead one and brought it to us, if we wanted to add the remains to our collection.
Q: The exhibit here has other lost species, in addition to the passenger pigeon.
A: One that I would have loved to have seen is the very colorful Carolina parakeet. Another is the ivory-billed woodpecker, a truly amazing bird. I think the specimens we have on display are the rarest in the whole museum, and we have more than 30,000 specimens of animals, birds, plants. But we're not going to get any more of these.
Q: The exhibition doesn’t just talk about modern extinctions — you go back to prehistory, as well, to the dinosaurs and before them.
A: Right, the first point we're trying to make is that extinctions are a natural event — that through all of geological time, the Earth has lost about 98 percent of all the species that have ever existed. There have been five major extinctions through time. In Ohio, you had such things as the loss of trilobites and other sea animals hundreds of millions of years ago. The Ice Age was the most recent extinction event, and that was occurring 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Scientists are beginning to ask whether the time we're in now is the sixth major extinction.
Q: Did people effect the Ice Age extinction?
A: We think now there was a human impact. Climate change was melting the glaciers back, but also human hunters were moving in, which probably contributed to the large-animal extinctions, such as mammoths and sloths. There actually were large numbers of people in North America at that time, enough to have an effect.
Q: So today would be the second mass extinction we’ve had a hand in.
A: Good point. Here we go again.
Q: So, generally, what has caused extinctions over time?
A: Before humans, the great extinctions from millions of years ago, it was things like changes in sea levels, volcanoes, asteroid or comet impacts, or long-lasting global warming or cooling. Today, it's things like climate change, pollution, the destruction of habitats, unregulated hunting or fishing or the introduction of exotic species.
Q: The exhibition opens with a large, fast-moving clock. Talk about that.
A: We wanted to show that the rate of extinctions has increased. We talk about the past, but scientists have realized that we've lost one to 10 species a year through time — up to 100 a year, if you include fungi and bacteria. But now the rate has really sped up, because of human influence. We're losing dozens of species a day, worldwide. It's really pretty amazing. The clock was a good way to show that.
Q: And you mention fungi. This isn’t just animal species.
A: No, the whole range of living things — plants, insects, birds, reptiles, mammals, fish, clams, snails, everything. Interestingly, scientists are starting to call this time period in history the Anthropocene, because of the incredible human impact on the environment and other species.
Q: What’s the impact on us?
A: The analogy I use on tours is to imagine you're on an airplane and you look out at the wings and see a rivet fall off. But the plane's still flying, so you think it's no big deal. Then another rivet falls off. Now you're worried, but it seems OK. Then another goes. How many can you lose before the engine falls off and the plane crashes, or you have to land? So, you might be able to lose, say, 10 or 100 species — but at what point does it become a critical loss that leads to the whole ecosystem unravelling? Everything is connected — that's what we've learned through time. If you pull out some of the rivets, you're going to have problems.
Q: And you don’t see it coming.
A: Right, until it's too late. Think back to the passenger pigeon — in the late 18th, early 19th centuries, the whole idea of extinction was a foreign thought. People didn't believe that it could occur. When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark off to explore the West, part of their mission was to look for mammoths. They'd found skeletons of mammoths, so they knew they'd been here, but people didn't yet believe in extinction. Part of it was religious; if God had created something, it must last forever.
Q: Our thinking on wildlife has changed today.
A: We realize now that it's not an unlimited resource. We see the loss of the passenger pigeon and other animals, and we know now it can happen. So we're much more careful with our resources. The media's response has helped promote these ideas, too. Just look at the changes in my lifetime — when I was a kid, DDT was still being used. There wasn't great environmental awareness. Today, that's a huge change.
Q: Part of the exhibit is dedicated to “heroes” of the environmental movement who helped create that awareness.
A: We wanted to show people who have made a difference in protecting species. Rachel Carson, who wrote "Silent Spring," of course, is a big one. There's Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir and others. Some have Ohio connections — one of those is Steve Kress, who grew up in Columbus and studied zoology and wildlife management at Ohio State and teaches at Cornell now. He started "Project Puffin" in the 1970s to bring back the Atlantic puffin populations back their original habitat on an island in Maine, where they'd been displaced by the seagulls that followed the fishing industry. It worked very well.
Q: So, when there is a big success like that — or, say, like the return of bald eagles to Ohio — does that help the movement or hurt? I mean, does it give people a false sense that things are fine?
A: I think it helps, by getting people's attention and making them see that if we do things correctly, we can bring a species back from the brink. What I worry about more is the idea of "de-extinction," which I think might make people think we don't have to work so hard at this.
Q: What is de-extinction?
A: It's the "Jurassic Park" idea to use cloning to bring back extinct species like the mammoth — you take genes from bones and mix them with a modern, related species like the elephant, and bring them back. Some people think that's really possible and a good idea. But you have to wonder whether we have the habitat and conditions today for a species that is gone. And what effect would they have? If you brought back the passenger pigeon, what would be their impact on today's environment? Another school of thought on de-extinction is that it would create huge public awareness and help raise a lot of money to promote future conservation.
Q: Where do you fall on this?
A: I fall more toward bring them back. I think if you could go see a mammoth in a zoo today, it would generate huge amounts of money for conservation and the environment. That would be a good thing.
Q: So, the last part of the exhibition is on what people can do.
A: We wanted to give people an idea how they can help: Basic recycling. Trying to drive less. Carpool. Eat less meat. Create less pollution. Help reduce the speed of climate change. Plant a tree. Take shorter showers. Plant a garden. Rethink bottled water. Use less electricity. The basic things that people already know to do to just protect the environment. Protecting habitat for animals is the biggest step. These are all small things that really will have a large impact. The bottom line is that it's not too late to make positive changes to slow down the loss of species. Do what you can to help.
Q: As a scientist, are you optimistic?
A: I am. Because while we are entering this new phase of what could be a mass extinction, we do have time to slow it down or stop it before it goes too far. The exhibition seems to have a real impact on the children who visit — they leave little cards at the end about ideas they have to protect they environment and a lot of them are really neat. They seem to really care. So I think it's all possible.
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