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James Hill Craddock, a biologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who has worked extensively with American chestnut trees, has called the decimation of the once-dominant trees in North America from a foreign fungus/blight in the early 1900s "the greatest ecological disaster in North America since the Ice Age." And yet, those trees have survived to this day albeit in much diminished numbers and with much shorter specimens, whereas the passenger pigeon (a bird that was quite abundant in North America through the first half of the nineteenth century) went completely extinct in 1914.
My question is, which really was a worse North American ecological disaster - the virtual elimination of the American chestnut or the complete extinction of the passenger pigeon?
I'd never claim to be an expert on either species, but in general, I tend to consider loss of producer organisms (and I'd consider a habitat created by chestnuts more of an energy producer) more ecologically damaging than extermination of one of the [i]consumers/I] of that energy. But, there's so much about the passenger pigeon and its influences on the surroundings we'll never understand. At the time the species was in serious decline, no one was evaluating it in that way. Too late now. All we can do is theorize just how significant an effect all those millions of birds had.
Last edited by Parnassia; 01-04-2024 at 02:54 PM..
- American chestnuts got obliterated by a invasive fungus from East Asia.
- Passenger pigeons became extinct for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Within a span of about 70 years, they went from billions to none. While humans undoubtedly contributed, they may not have been the only factor. It appears their populations fluctuated widely over the centuries.
Frankly, given what I've read about the Passenger pigeons, I'm not entirely sure nature was worse off for their demise. They were so abundant that flocks of millions would darken the skies for hours at a time. Not to mention buckets of bird droppings everywhere. No doubt many other bird species benefited from their absence.
- American chestnuts got obliterated by a invasive fungus from East Asia.
- Passenger pigeons became extinct for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Within a span of about 70 years, they went from billions to none. While humans undoubtedly contributed, they may not have been the only factor. It appears their populations fluctuated widely over the centuries.
Considering the state of ecological "art" at the time, there probably were other factors contributing to their demise. Problem is, people weren't looking for those patterns while the species was still abundant. Now, the evidence can't be recreated after the fact. Habitat shifts triggered by weather (late or early frosts, drought, excessive rain, heat, wildfires), boom and bust in available food due to cycling tree disease outbreaks (a crash during breeding season could doom a generation of young), a weather event like a late or early freeze wiping out a breeding population, infectious disease, mutations affecting reproductive success, socio-behavioral problems, who knows.
- American chestnuts got obliterated by a invasive fungus from East Asia.
- Passenger pigeons became extinct for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Within a span of about 70 years, they went from billions to none. While humans undoubtedly contributed, they may not have been the only factor. It appears their populations fluctuated widely over the centuries.
Frankly, given what I've read about the Passenger pigeons, I'm not entirely sure nature was worse off for their demise. They were so abundant that flocks of millions would darken the skies for hours at a time. Not to mention buckets of bird droppings everywhere. No doubt many other bird species benefited from their absence.
You're right about the multi-factorial causes of extinction. John Muir grew up here on WI and wrote of flocks of the pigeons darkening the skies for hours on end as they migrated, breaking stout limbs off oak trees by their weight when alighting. Farmers would drive herds of hogs miles to the migration route to feed in a frenzy on the carcasses as people shot the birds down out of trees....But plenty survived. They didn't run out of habitat- the usual reason for man-made extinctions....Study the math of populations and extinctions are seen to be usually just a matter of how the numbers fall.
As far as "disaster,"-- define disaster? Certainly an extinction is a disaster for that particular species, but its niche in the ecosystem survives and will soon be filled by the process of natural succession &/or evolution.
Anyone suggesting an extinction is a "disaster" has little understanding of ecology & evolution.
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