致最后一只候鴿瑪莎

致最后一只候鴿瑪莎

The last passenger pigeon on Earth died just more than 100 years ago. Housed at the Cincinnati Zoo and named "Martha," she was the final holdout of a species that went from one of the planet's most abundant birds to one of its highest-profile extinctions. And it all happened within a few decades, an early stage of what many scientists now agree is Earth's sixth mass extinction event.

地球上最后一只旅鴿100多年前剛剛死亡。她住在辛辛那提動物園，名叫“瑪莎”(Martha)，是這個物種的最后一名幸存者。這個物種曾是地球上數(shù)量最多的鳥類之一，后來經(jīng)歷了最引人注目的物種滅絕之一。這一切都發(fā)生在幾十年內(nèi)，許多科學(xué)家現(xiàn)在認為這是地球第六次大規(guī)模滅絕事件的早期階段。

Adult passenger pigeons had blue-gray wings, reddish breast feathers and iridescent necks. (Photo: Tim Lenz [CC BY 2.0]/Flickr)

Martha was found dead in the bottom of her cage on Sept. 1, 1914, at the age of 29. She had been born in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1885, and scientists had tried frantically to breed her once the plight of her species became clear.

1914年9月1日，29歲的瑪莎被發(fā)現(xiàn)死在籠底。1885年，她出生在辛辛那提動物園的圈養(yǎng)環(huán)境中，當(dāng)她的物種的困境變得清晰時，科學(xué)家們瘋狂地試圖促進她的繁殖。

But it was too late, and Sept. 1 now marks the extinction of passenger pigeons, which had been one of eastern North America's most iconic animals. In 2010, the conservation group WildEarth Guardians declared Sept. 1 "Passenger Pigeon Day" in honor of Martha's death.

但為時已晚，9月1日標(biāo)志著北美東部最具標(biāo)志性的動物之一信鴿的滅絕。2010年，自然保護組織wilguardians宣布9月1日為“旅鴿日”，以紀念瑪莎之死。

Passenger pigeons once accounted for up to 40 percent of the total bird population in the U.S., according to the Smithsonian Institution, with an estimated 3 billion to 5 billion of them occupying North America when European explorers first arrived. Many of those explorers reported seeing "countless numbers" and "infinite multitudes" of passenger pigeons flying overhead, with flocks said to be so large and dense that they sometimes blocked the sun for hours.

據(jù)史密森學(xué)會(Smithsonian Institution)估計，信鴿曾經(jīng)占美國鳥類總數(shù)的40%，當(dāng)歐洲探險者首次抵達北美時，約有30億至50億人居住在那里。許多探險者報告說，他們看到了“數(shù)不清的”和“無窮無盡的成群結(jié)隊”的信鴿飛過頭頂，據(jù)說信鴿群又大又密，有時會遮擋陽光達數(shù)小時之久。

Martha, seen in 1914, wasn't helped by the pleas of conservationists. (Photo: Enno Meyer [Public domain]/Wikimedia Commons)

Yet by the early 1900s, the species had all but disappeared. Virtually no wild passenger pigeons could be found. Suddenly, Martha seemed to be the last of her kind.

然而到了20世紀初，這個物種幾乎消失了。幾乎找不到野鴿。突然發(fā)現(xiàn)，瑪莎似乎是她的同類中最后一個。

Martha's relatives had fallen victim to a familiar duo of threats that still haunt endangered species today: overhunting and habitat loss. Because passenger pigeons flew in such big, dense flocks, it was easy for colonists and settlers to shoot them. Professional hunters began killing and netting them en masse in the early 19th century, selling their meat and feathers in city markets. At the same time, the vast Eastern forests where passenger pigeons nested were being rapidly cleared for new farms and cities, further decimating the birds. Still, no conservation laws existed to protect them.

瑪莎的親戚們已經(jīng)成為一個熟悉的雙重威脅的受害者，這些威脅至今仍困擾著瀕危物種:過度狩獵和棲息地喪失。由于信鴿成群結(jié)隊地飛行，殖民者和定居者很容易射殺它們。19世紀初，職業(yè)獵人開始集體捕殺它們，并將它們編織成網(wǎng)，在城市市場上出售它們的肉和羽毛。與此同時，信鴿筑巢的東部大片森林正在被迅速清理，用于新的農(nóng)場和城市，進一步造成信鴿的大量死亡。然而，并沒有任何保護它們的法律。

From 1909 to 1912, the American Ornithologists' Union offered $1,500 to anyone who could find a nest or colony of passenger pigeons. No one ever did, and Martha died two years later, foreshadowing an extinction crisis that kept snowballing over the next century. The U.S. endangered species list now includes more than 2,000 total listings, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists 9,741 species as "endangered" worldwide and 6,127 are "critically endangered."

從1909年到1912年，美國鳥類學(xué)家協(xié)會向任何能找到一窩或一群信鴿的人提供1500美元。從來沒有人這么做過，瑪莎兩年后去世了，這預(yù)示著一場在接下來的一個世紀里持續(xù)滾雪球般擴大的滅絕危機。美國瀕危物種名錄目前包括2000多種物種，國際自然保護聯(lián)盟(International Union for Conservation of Nature)在全球范圍內(nèi)將9741種物種列為“瀕危”物種，6127種列為“極度瀕危”物種。

Martha has long served as a symbol for the threat of extinction, but her profile is likely to grow even more. That's because, as Project Passenger Pigeon points out, Sept. 1, 2014, marked the 100-year anniversary of Martha's death — as well as a full century of lessons learned and implemented in her memory.

長期以來，瑪莎一直被視為滅絕威脅的象征，但她的形象可能會進一步擴大。這是因為，正如旅鴿項目所指出的那樣，2014年9月1日是瑪莎去世100周年紀念日，也是她從中吸取并實施了整整一個世紀的教訓(xùn)。