Website for the Project ... Sept. 21, WGVU will air the flic.

Gorgeous bird. The last one died in a zoo, 9-1-1914

Once Abundant— Now Forgotten
This dramatic film will be the keystone of the ambitious multi-media project that uses the passenger pigeon story, of a billions-to-zero extermination in in less than 50 years, to explore important present day issues.

The centenary of this recent extinction offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for this film to sharply focus new attention on habitat conservation and species survival—and help us avoid the fate of the passenger pigeon for future species.

With cutting-edge CGI animation techniques, From Billions to None will recreate the glory of passenger pigeons in flight as well as the ways in which our 19th century ancestors destroyed them all— with ruthless, no-limits shooting.

The film will highlight the important lessons of the past to offer solutions to the immediate challenges species face. You'll see how exciting successes have been achieved in sustaining declining species populations.

Cloning efforts are afoot via paleo-whatever..
OKJ.. Overpopulate, kill off everything Not-you, then join them. (Nobody listened to Malthus.. either.)

Alas, doesn't change our execrable record in n similar examples: even before the present dis-USA, we have been a FAIL, if one takes Gandhi's observation about
"a nations's relationship to its animals" with the incisiveness of its implication.

For the dis-USA today: there are numerous stats to indicate that 'Muricans' merely continue their disdain for any comprehension of the interdependence of all species.
We have proven that we are capable of Finding Out what interdependence Means.
(Maybe sooner than anyone ever projected?)

Am most familiar with home turf, natch, but aware of such atrocities as whale-bashing-for "sport" on one island and various random events of sheer cruelty. Bull-"art-killing" has been around forever.
I guess intentionally, did not want to know exactly, numerically, how deranged is the whole species. Just seeing the local phenomena is depressing enough. You can't manufacture any realistic expectations of civilizing this many perps--even if you had a whole generation to hope that beneficent propaganda might spawn adulthood.

Just now it looks beyond scary and well-into bleak: we're now a hive; too-many per hectare, via any listing of accelerating material/energy needs -vs- any efficiency gains, soon to be swamped by sheer #mouths. So if over-population is the catalyst (?) for most of the negative-slope curves, the fact that this word remains taboo in most cultures guarantees that, even realization of the various plights shall be amidst a minority. (Well, until the most optimistic tipping-points tip.)

Animals will be even farther off the radar, kill-sports will continue to attract the desensitized, the core of which group will be the child animal-torturers and other sociopaths. Gun-nuts everywhere shall insist on having live targets. (USA #1 in per-capita things that go Boom.) Entitlements to vast comforts, at-will energy, water and general wastage, habits of now ~ a century? Scarcity seems to be the only throttle, where there is no sense of community, whatsoever.

What I do know is, that there are a lot of aware people out there, trying to undo the insane cruelty of others; maybe it's good that we can't very well measure the ratio of nastiness to benevolence, via mindless numbers. There's always hope that some Huge-Shock might galvanize authentic interest in reversing the looming irreversible threats. Were such a miracle to occur, the animals might actually come to be respected--as corollary to the. most. improbable. enlightenment-schedule in all history. Was 'discretionary income' aka money then, that famous root of (most) Evil?

(Heard that Pollyanna was sold into slavery; somebody got a good price.) Irregularly-irregular is where we are, so if escape is a toss-up between blissful-ignorance (easy) or metaphysical options (easy, only if shallow) er, Place your Bets.