The 5th Most Embarrassing Moment of Ohio History is…
5. No One Believes the Passenger Pigeon Will Go Extinct … Until it Does
Cincinnati (1914). The Columbus medical doctor, John Maynard Wheaton was a founder of the American Ornithological Union and author of two important works on Ohio’s birds. Wheaton was not immune however to the prevailing lack of understanding of ecology and extinction. In his 1860 Catalogue of the Birds of Ohio he comments on the 1857 landmark Ohio legislation that provided the first real protections for select game birds, song birds and mammals. Among his comments was a terse and blunt sentence: “The passenger pigeon needs no protection.” Attesting to Wheaton’s lack of judgment, the last documented wild passenger pigeon was shot in Ohio in 1900. Martha became the last of her species when she died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
Ohio History Central: The Passenger Pigeon
Catalogue of the birds of Ohio. 1860. J.M. Wheaton. “From the Ohio agricultural report for 1860.” P 359-380.
Report on the birds of Ohio. 1879. J.M. Wheaton. From Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio. 628 pp.
Martha, the last ever, is now at the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C.