birdsoup

Passenger Pigeon became extinct a century ago when the last living bird, Martha, died in a Cincinnati zoo in 1914. Martha was the last of her kind. With her death Passenger Pigeons ceased to exist. They were officially extinct.

And extinction is forever. Or is it?

Last year, The Long Now Foundation, headed by Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame, sponsored discussion on how to revive the Passenger Pigeon. Ben Novak, a molecular biologist at U. of California, Santa Cruz is the driving force. He has already sequenced the genome of Passenger Pigeon specimens in museums. His concept is to identify how they differ from today’s Band-tailed Pigeon and then splice the differences into Band-tailed Pigeons.

It sounds like life imitating art. The project, called Revive & Restore, may be heading toward a modern day Jurassic Park.

I have a warm spot in my heart for Passenger Pigeons so I, for one, will be closely following their progress.