Once the most abundant bird on Earth, the now-extinct passenger pigeon filled skies across Pennsylvania until excessive hunting for food and sport and destruction of traditional breeding grounds led to its demise by the early 20th century.
 
Considered quite beautiful by most observers, passenger pigeons preferred beechnuts, acorns, or chestnuts — cyclical foods that caused them to “wander” to different hardwood forests each year. (The word “passenger” is derived from their migrating patterns.)
 
During the first half of the 1800s, North America may have boasted as many as 5 billion passenger pigeons, comprising 40 percent of all birds on the continent. Some researchers believe there may have been more passenger pigeons in the United States and southern Canada at one point than all other birds in the world combined.
 
Passenger pigeons were quite common in Pennsylvania, and many Commonwealth communities and locations were named after the birds: Pigeon Hollow, Pigeon, Pigeonroost Run, Pigeon Hills, Pigeon Creek, and Pigeon Cove. Even Moyamensing, on the west side of Philadelphia, is a Native American word for “pigeon droppings.”

However, passenger pigeons “officially” disappeared from Penn’s Woods on October 5, 1890, when Jasper Fincher, while on a picnic in woods near Linden, Clinton County, killed a “handsome male.” The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources lists the state’s last captive passenger pigeon as perishing in Lancaster County in 1910. The world’s final known survivor, a 29-year-old female named Martha, passed away in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
 
To honor the bird’s connection to the Keystone State and its legacy that directly contributed to America’s century-long wildlife conservation movement, I am proposing legislation to make the passenger pigeon the official “extinct species” of Pennsylvania. With this designation, future generations, as they wrestle with questions of extinction, would be encouraged to consider how to use our natural resources wisely.
 
Please join me in supporting this bill.