The conversation
The tragic story of America’s only native parrot, now extinct more than 100 years ago
“Carolina Periquitos”, by John James Audubon. Wikimedia CommonsIt was winter in upstate New York in 1780, in a rural town called Schoharie, home to the deeply religious Palatine Germans. Suddenly, a flock of gregarious green and red birds flew into the city, apparently in a whirlwind. The inhabitants of the city thought that the end of the world was upon them. Although thrush-sized birds left quickly, their appearance was forever imprinted in local tradition. As author Benjamin Smith Barton wrote: “The most ignorant Dutch settlers were extremely alarmed. They imagined, in terrible dismay, that this portended nothing less calamitous than the destruction of the world. ”You and I know that birds were not the forerunners of humanity’s death – but in a way, there was impending doom ahead. These birds were parakeets from Carolina, the only parrot native to America. In February 1918, the last captive Carolina parakeet died, alone in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo, the same zoo where the last captive passenger pigeon, called Martha, died four years earlier. Carolina’s last “official” wild parakeet was located in Florida just two years later. Why were these birds extinct? This remains a mystery. Given that parrots today are at greater risk of extinction than other large groups of birds, is there anything that scientists can learn from the Carolina parakeet? Unraveling Mysteries of the Parakeet For the past six years, I have collected information about where the Carolina parakeet has been observed in the past 450 years. The extinct parakeet Carolina, mounted on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY I spent hours and hours reading historical documents, travel diaries and other writings, from the 16th century to the 1940s. I often got lost in the stories surrounding these parrot observations – since the first reports of Europeans exploring the New World, to the harrowing tales of settlers who traveled the Oregon Trail in the 1800s, to gray-egg hunters combing Florida’s swamps in the early 1900s. I also combed collections of natural history museums, observing what many would see only as some old, dusty and scary dead birds. But I see them differently: beautiful in their own way, each with a story to tell. My goal was to unravel some of the enduring mysteries about the Carolina parakeet – like where it lived. Historically, people used to determine the range of a species by plotting the most extreme observations of that species on a map, drawing a polygon around them and ending the day. Because of this, people have long thought that Carolina parakeets lived from upstate New York to Colorado and down to the Texas coast. But birds are often seen in areas where they don’t normally go. For example, the snow owl’s reach – like Edwiges of “Harry Potter” fame – doesn’t really extend to Bermuda, although one has already been seen there. The historical distribution of the extinct Carolina parakeet. The green area represents a new understanding of where the eastern subspecies lived. Blue is where the western subspecies lived. The red line is based on a distribution map for species published in 1891. Ecology and Evolution (2017), CC BY Furthermore, scientists do not know what really led these parakeets to extinction. Some thought it was habitat loss. Some thought it was hunting and trapping. Some thought of illness. Some even thought it was a competition with non-native bees for cavities in the trees, where parakeets would perch and nest. Thanks to the data I have compiled, as well as cutting edge machine learning approaches to analyze that data, my colleagues and I have been able to reconstruct the likely range and climatic niche of Carolina parakeets. It ended up being much smaller than previously believed. Its range generally extended from eastern Nebraska to Ohio, southern Louisiana and Texas. The eastern subspecies lived mainly along the southeastern coast of Alabama, through Florida and up to Virginia. We were also able to confirm the old hypothesis that parakeets in the northwest part of their distribution migrated to the southeast in winter, to avoid the scorching cold of the midwest. Why it matters In a world facing extinction on a scale never seen in the past 65 million years, some of you may ask yourself: Are there not more important things to study? Although this may seem a little insignificant, some scientists consider the Carolina parakeet to be one of the main candidates for “de-cutting”. This is a process in which DNA is collected from specimens and used to “resurrect” extinct species, not unlike “Jurassic Park” (but with much less action and decidedly less Jeff Goldblum). If someone spent millions of dollars doing all the genetic and reproductive work to bring this species back, or any other species, how would they find out where to release these birds? Given the effects of climate change, it is no longer certain that scientists could release the birds exactly where they used to be and wait for them to flourish. Whether or not extinction is a worthwhile use for conservation and money is another question, better answered by someone other than me. But this is just one example of a potential use for this type of research. In many ways, the story of the Carolina parakeet’s decline parallels the history of American growth throughout the 19th century. All that prosperity brought many terrible costs. As the United States expanded and remade the landscape to meet its needs, many native species have lost their chance. Today, parrots face a serious threat of extinction. The diversity of parrots tends to be greater in areas around the world that are developing rapidly, as well as the United States during the 19th century. Therefore, any lessons that the parakeet Carolina can teach us can be crucial to move forward. I continue to study Carolina parakeets and other recently extinct species in an effort to listen and report on these lessons. As cliché as it may be, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This article was republished from The Conversation, a non-profit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. Read more: Will we soon see another wave of bird extinction in the Americas? Protecting endangered species: 6 essential readingsSuper black feathers can absorb virtually all photons of light that reach them Kevin R. Burgio has received funding from the National Science Foundation.