Do people in the USA want the Passenger Pigeon back?

The Passenger Pigeon was once the most abundant bird in the world.

During the early 1800s up to 5 billion of the species graced the eastern woodlands of the US, and their flocks darkened the skies for hours.

Probably because of over-hunting and habitat loss, it became extinct within 50 years.

Now some scientists think they can bring back the Passenger Pigeon, possibly within 15 years.

But do people in the United States actually want them back?

Assuming they are released into the wild, they could swarm and poop all over the place.
Some say they will facilitate native forests and ecosystems.
However, they were also known to sometimes destroy trees by uprooting them with the weight of a swarm, and farmers considered them pests.

I guess we don't know if they always flocked in the astounding fashion of the 18th/19th centuries.
The Native Americans actually changed the landscape to encourage certain hunting patterns, and perhaps the pigeon disappeared with the indigenous nations.
Not only were they over-hunted with growing protein needs and industrialization, but perhaps their nesting grounds disappeared without native stewardship.

Will it be annoying and become an endangered wild species that will decrease modern hunting land?
Will they even flourish?
Is it a moral imperative to de-extinct species that we know modern humans wiped out?
Perhaps we should rather focus on saving endangered species that can hardly be conserved now.

But still, it would be so fantastic to see a Passenger Pigeon ...
Yes, I think in the US it can be done.

Holy crap, you're right. I remember them being everywhere and you seldom see them now. Canada, not US. They buggers have attitude. They won't even fly away. Just walk and give you a nasty look. I can't even remember the last time I saw a pigeon. Maybe they got too cocky.

a reply to: intrepid
Oh, oops, my apologies if they also lived in Canada.
I suppose they went by habitat rather than modern borders (duh).
Most books and sources just mention the US, but it would be interesting if they had a Canadian story too.

Interesting, I was just looking up the Passenger Pigeon today. I'm looking for a book I read as a child about the last passenger pigeon - I don't know whether it was fiction or about 'Martha' - the last passenger pigeon. I remember it as a fictional story but it's hard to remember the facts through all the years since - it was a book that impacted me greatly. It's the first time I understood (and the buffalo) how distruction human kind could be, how thoughtless.

The Passenger Pigeon became extinct because of 1) over hunting and 2) distruction of habitate both human caused.

It would be a couriosity to bring them back by cloning but I doubt they could ever be viable species in the wild again.

The common Pigeon that I recall being everywhere in my youth and having to 'clean up bombs' regularly isn't around much in the city any longer.

a reply to: halfoldman

Strange take when in fact birds are dying out.

You are right... we don't need no stinking pigeons !!!

Teachers leave us kids alone!

a reply to: FyreByrd
The last Passenger Pigeon was indeed named Martha, and died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
en.wikipedia.org...

The fact that such an "endlessly abundant" species could become extinct was quite a wake-up call, and it would be interesting to read some history studies (or perhaps propose a thesis on it) to see how much influence this extinction had on the Western swing towards conservationism in the 20th century.

More pigeons will mean more hawks. Then when the hawks eat all the pigeons, kittens will start disappearing.

originally posted by: halfoldman
The fact that such an "endlessly abundant" species could become extinct was quite a wake-up call....

And went without anyone noticing. Not just the PP but the common one as well. HOW?

a reply to: skunkape23
On the other hand, crazy cat ladies might be replaced by crazy pigeon ladies, and the demand for kittens will drop.

a reply to: intrepid
Sadly people only notice what they want to notice.

The mind-set (also with some colonists in Africa) back then was that game would just somehow always be there.

This may come out of left field but do you have a lot of seagulls there?

Here are some recipes.
www.soarnomore.com...

a reply to: intrepid
We do, and we also had an albatross around PW Botha's neck named Nelson.


More seriously though, South Africa has a long coastline and one can see all kinds of seabirds, from gulls to penguins.

a reply to: halfoldman

Pigeon are scavengers. Same as seagulls. I've been seeing more seagulls in Ontario lately. Maybe one scavenger took out another.

a reply to: intrepid
Oh, you mean gulls as more of a pest.

It has been an issue, because they do come into urban areas to scavenge.

I'm not sure what happened, but they mostly disappeared.

Now we have some crow from India, which is quite a formidable critter.

More pigeons will mean more hawks. Then when the hawks eat all the pigeons, kittens will start disappearing.

On the other hand, crazy cat ladies might be replaced by crazy pigeon ladies, and the demand for kittens will drop.

Sounds like a win/win to me.

We could use GPS tracking chips on these pigeons to find out where our mail is. We could also find out how many coffee breaks they take, finding them sitting on a bridge with a lot of other pigeons discussing the best parks and houses to find people who feed them. Oh, there I go again, insinuating that animals can communicate and are intelligent when they are nothing more then Squab.

a reply to: intrepid

funny...we have a lot of seagulls here. THey like to wander around the old Wal Mart parking lot, since a McDonald's is there. And a (very) small lake is adjacent.

We live over 1000 miles from any ocean in the middle of the desert.

RE: pigeons....we have thousands of those too. There is no shortage of pigeons. Obviously passenger pigeons aren't here (this wasn't really their habitat to begin with)....but those feathered rats that people call pigeons....we have no shortage of them here.

And their wild counterparts, dove. OMG, do we have a ton of dove. This last year was a banner hunting season for dove

on a side note: passenger pigeons have no hope of surviving around humans. It is how easy they are to hunt.

I'd like to see them try. It would be a great achievement to bring back a species that man drove into extinction.

Once the Passenger Pigeon is back up to healthy numbers, we can use them to stuff a roasted Wooly Mammoth.

Can you pass the pigeon please? I'll have another slab of mammoth meat and some pickled dodo eggs. Thanks.