致最后一只候鸽玛莎

致最后一只候鸽玛莎

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.

地球上最后一只旅鸽100多年前刚刚死亡。她住在辛辛那提动物园，名叫“玛莎”(Martha)，是这个物种的最后一名幸存者。这个物种曾是地球上数量最多的鸟类之一，后来经历了最引人注目的物种灭绝之一。这一切都发生在几十年内，许多科学家现在认为这是地球第六次大规模灭绝事件的早期阶段。

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岁的玛莎被发现死在笼底。1885年，她出生在辛辛那提动物园的圈养环境中，当她的物种的困境变得清晰时，科学家们疯狂地试图促进她的繁殖。

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.

但为时已晚，9月1日标志着北美东部最具标志性的动物之一信鸽的灭绝。2010年，自然保护组织wilguardians宣布9月1日为“旅鸽日”，以纪念玛莎之死。

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.

据史密森学会(Smithsonian Institution)估计，信鸽曾经占美国鸟类总数的40%，当欧洲探险者首次抵达北美时，约有30亿至50亿人居住在那里。许多探险者报告说，他们看到了“数不清的”和“无穷无尽的成群结队”的信鸽飞过头顶，据说信鸽群又大又密，有时会遮挡阳光达数小时之久。

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世纪初，这个物种几乎消失了。几乎找不到野鸽。突然发现，玛莎似乎是她的同类中最后一个。

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.

玛莎的亲戚们已经成为一个熟悉的双重威胁的受害者，这些威胁至今仍困扰着濒危物种:过度狩猎和栖息地丧失。由于信鸽成群结队地飞行，殖民者和定居者很容易射杀它们。19世纪初，职业猎人开始集体捕杀它们，并将它们编织成网，在城市市场上出售它们的肉和羽毛。与此同时，信鸽筑巢的东部大片森林正在被迅速清理，用于新的农场和城市，进一步造成信鸽的大量死亡。然而，并没有任何保护它们的法律。

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."

从1909年到1912年，美国鸟类学家协会向任何能找到一窝或一群信鸽的人提供1500美元。从来没有人这么做过，玛莎两年后去世了，这预示着一场在接下来的一个世纪里持续滚雪球般扩大的灭绝危机。美国濒危物种名录目前包括2000多种物种，国际自然保护联盟(International Union for Conservation of Nature)在全球范围内将9741种物种列为“濒危”物种，6127种列为“极度濒危”物种。

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.

长期以来，玛莎一直被视为灭绝威胁的象征，但她的形象可能会进一步扩大。这是因为，正如旅鸽项目所指出的那样，2014年9月1日是玛莎去世100周年纪念日，也是她从中吸取并实施了整整一个世纪的教训。