Martha died on September 1st, 1914. She was 29. Martha wasn’t your average Hollywood starlet – she was something even more rare: an endling, the last member of her species. Just a few hundred years earlier, passenger pigeons flocks were so large that they could literally darken the sky for hours. So how did we get from those numbers to extinction? And are they really gone for good?
Endlings portrait illustrations are by Zoe Keller. You can find out more about her and her work here: https://www.zoekeller.com/
Find out more about the National Geographic Photo Ark here: https://www.joelsartore.com/
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Sources:
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/103784#page/348/mode/1up
https://www.si.edu/object/martha-passenger-pigeon%3Asiris_sic_11640#:~:text=Mounted%20in%20a%20display%20case,in%20the%20conservation%20of%20wildlife
https://www.si.edu/spotlight/passenger-pigeon
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https://web.archive.org/web/20160121214525/http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/featured_objects/martha2.html
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https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/paspig/cur/conservation
https://www.britannica.com/science/de-extinction
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6265789/#sec2-genes-09-00548
https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/Rep-2016-009.pdf
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2435.12705
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https://reviverestore.org/projects/about-the-passenger-pigeon/
https://reviverestore.org/projects/the-great-passenger-pigeon-comeback/progress-to-date/
https://archive.org/details/jstor-4071160/page/n9/mode/2up
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/1540-9295-12.6.315
https://mnland.org/2024/09/10/extinction-passenger-pigeon/#:~:text=The%20speed%20at%20which%20the,impact%20while%20they%20were%20here
https://library.si.edu/event/lecture-and-book-signing-joel-greenberg
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Images:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g0JEjz77GSwkrpeYbnRYhG1xrl4n45Tmea7Sw0q0u0M/edit?tab=t.0
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