Passenger pigeons were a self-extinguishing chain reaction dependent on full intensity.

Evidence

We are told by economic moralists that to mourn the pigeon is mere nostalgia; that if the pigeoners had not done away with him, the farmers would ultimately have been obliged, in self-defense, to do so. … The pigeon was a biological storm. He was the lightning that played between two opposing potentials of intolerable intensity: the fat of the land and the oxygen of the air. Yearly the feathered tempest roared up, down, and across the continent, sucking up the laden fruits of forest and prairie, burning them in a traveling blast of life. Like any other chain reaction, the pigeon could survive no dimunition of his own furious intensity. When the pigeoners subtracted from his numbers, and the pioneers chopped gaps in the continuity of his fuel, his flame guttered out with hardly a sputter or even a wisp of smoke. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 392

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘biological storm’ framing pairs with the land ethic discussion later in the book — extinction as collapse of a unique ecological phenomenon rather than simple overkilling. — connects to: A species’ presence can transform a landscape more than its physical mass suggests. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 493; Passenger pigeons’ extreme social empathy made them an easy prey for humans — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1487

Broader Connections

• Passenger pigeons’ extreme social empathy made them an easy prey for humans #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1487