January 8, 2019

"DUE TO THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY IS CLOSED;*

........programs and events at the museum are also canceled".

I thought I had the wrong website.
I was searching for pictures of Martha the last known Passenger Pigeon on the Smithsonian website and this was the banner headline.
https://lexieintrator.blogspot.com/2019/01/passenger-pigeon-tourte-voyageuse.html
http://lexieintrator.blogspot.com/2018/12/please-pass-pigeons.html

It's the temporary extinction of one of the world's finest museums that shows us what makes up our world, who were and are the earth's fabulous creatures. 

On a whim. This crazy, dangerous first-world politician, a certain Donald Trump, has a temper tantrum because his cruel, misguided vision of a physical wall between nations has not been  funded, and he punishes the American people by closing down their first-world government, costing them billions and perhaps the very fiber of their country.

The victims are both people and institutions.
Among others, this great museum is closed.

Outrageous.

And there I was, yammering on about bird extinction, with cultural extinction happening before my eyes. No museum. Martha the last Passenger Pigeon is locked up.


*Note the semi-colon in the title: it's real, a piece of punctuation that's fallen out of use, left over from a time when people could communicate logically and peacefully. A semi-colon did not stop you in its tracks; it guided you to the next thought farther along in the sentence. People could express themselves in full sentences and yes, make some sense of what they were discussing!
Which is more than I can, after this latest hideous jolt.




Martha, your genes are on the table


Passenger Pigeon - Tourte voyageuse - Ectopistes migratorius

       
Louis Agassi Fuertes, National Geographic


The original Passenger Pigeon is indeed extinct.

"The Passenger Pigeon – also known as Ectopistes migratorius – is an extinct bird which was endemic to North America. At one point in time, billions of these birds lived and flew over North America. However, deforestation and massive hunting reduced their numbers from the billions all the way to extinction in only a few years. It is probably one of the largest extinctions caused by mankind."
https://www.newdinosaurs.com/passenger-pigeon/

 "Martha, thought to be the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The eradication of this species is a notable example of anthropogenic extinction." 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

"When she died, scientists packed her into a 300-pound block of ice and put her on a train to Washington."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/meet-martha-the-very-last-passenger-pigeon/380473/

Fascinating footage on this link, showing Martha stuffed, preserved forever (as it were).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1sWJcc_cY

A touching essay that includes Martha's final years in the Cincinnati Zoo, and her pavillion is now a National Historical Landmark.
https://abcbirds.org/martha-the-last-of-her-kind/

A group called Revive and Restore whose mission to"enhance biodiversity through new techniques of genetic rescue for endangered and extinct species."  In 2015 they held a "New Genomic Solutions for Conservation Problems Workshop". Rather vague cahier des charges. We don't know if they've cooked up anything, but as I mentioned on the previous pigeon blog, people are breeding birds for passenger pigeon qualities. 
https://reviverestore.org/about-the-passenger-pigeon/

Martha, your genes are on the table!

Old picture of Martha at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC