MINNEAPOLIS -- A hundred years ago, Martha died and an environmental cautionary tale was born. On Sept. 1, 1914, Martha, a passenger pigeon, fell off her perch at the Cincinnati Zoo and dropped dead.

Despite their reputation for being dirty and disease-carrying, pigeons are actually quite clean animals that pose little risk of transmitting pathogens to humans. Pigeons aren't stupid, either, ...

In 1800, the world’s human population had yet to hit one billion. However, in North America, it was estimated that there were between three and five billion passenger pigeons. Now extinct, the species ...

The history of the extinct passenger pigeon has a local footnote. In 1895 the last nest and egg of that species to be found in the wild were collected near Minneapolis, exact location unknown. This ...

The last known passenger pigeon died on Sept. 1, 1914. Mark Robbins, ornithology collection manager for the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, recently held one of the passenger pigeon ...

PETOSKEY — In 1914, the very last known passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Now, 109 years later, passenger pigeons are most famously known as a species driven to extinction. Historical ...

Scientists think a quarter of the total bird population in the United States in the early 1800s was passenger pigeons. But then something changed: 110 years ago Sunday, Martha – the very last ...

“The Passenger Pigeon was no mere bird; he was a biological storm. He was the lightning that played between two biotic poles of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and his own zest for living.

It is often said that the passenger pigeon, once among the most abundant birds in North America, traveled in flocks so enormous that they darkened the skies for hours as they passed. The idea that the ...

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with corrected information about Stanley Temple’s 2013 TEDx Talk and Revive & Restore’s partnership with the Applied Ecological Institute, Stratifyx and UW ...