Superscript textWhat is the closest related living parrot to the Carolina Parakeet and how do we go about getting some cloning (from DNA extracted from bones that arean't even 100 years ol yet!) done on this parrot? I would love to see a cloned version introduced in our already fractured environment (at least this introduction wouldn't be TOTALLY feral- it might even help, who knows?). At least have a few clones in the zoos, this would be an EXCELLENT candidate to resurect an extinct animal. Please someone, pick up the ball and run with this (I'm too poor and only have a BA degree, otherwise, I'd try to do it!). Let us know if you start an initiative (and have a website) to get these birds flying again. THANKS!Have there been any attempts to clone these with a closely related living parakeet? I have seen green pigeon sized parrots flying near to the Ohio River in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. I have seen them in the same area for several years in a row but there seems to be only about 5 birds in this small flock. Maybe the Carolina parrot could be cloned with these parrots (probably was monk parakeets?). What a shameful and precious loss to our nation. I wonder what a large flock of Carolina Parrots must have sounded like and the explosion of color must had looked like when a big paddle-wheeled steam boat passed their riverbank nesting areas on the Ohio River; I hope someone admired them for their natural beauty.--Cotinis 09:10, 23 April 2006 (UTC)Wouldn't you be able to get some type of Bone DNA from one of the birds? If they can find DNA in 100,000 year old bones surely they could in these.--Josh 04:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC) Source/Quote neededthe following text needs source/quote to verify."This combination of factors extirpated the species from most of its range until the early years of the 20th century. However, the last populations were not much hunted for food or feathers, nor did the farmers in rural Florida consider them a pest as the benefit of the birds' love of cockleburs clearly outweighed the minor damage they did to the small-scale garden plots. The final extinction of the species is somewhat of a mystery, but the most likely cause seems to be that the birds succumbed to poultry disease, as suggested by the rapid disappearance of the last, small, but apparently healthy and reproducing flocks of these highly social birds. If this is true, the very fact that the Carolina Parakeet was finally tolerated to roam in the vicinity of human settlements proved its undoing."--Hkchan123 15:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)"POPULATION REGULATION, CAUSES OF EXTINCTIONThe pattern of the Carolina Parakeet’s decline suggests that whatever reproductive problems the species may have had, its disappearance was likely due largely to excessive mortality and other subtractions from wild populations. Specifically, many populations (e.g., Audubon 1831, Scott 1889, Furnas 1902) evidently disappeared so extremely rapidly that factors beyond reproductive deficiency were probably predominant, especially considering the substantial longevity known for some individuals in captivity. It is notable as well that substantial reproduction was still occurring in at least some of the last populations for which data were available. Here we note the large number of immatures in Ridgway’s series of birds collected in 1896 in central Florida (McKinley 1985); the quick disappearance after 1915 of the substantial numbers of parakeets known to Minor McGlaughlin of Olney, FL, despite presence of juveniles in the flock (NFRS interviews of 1979); the late (1927) nesting records of Doe in central Florida, involving 4 birds of a flock of 7; the apparent family group of parakeets seen by Warren Shokes in 1938 along the Santee River of S. Carolina (Sprunt 1938); and the Furnas (1902) account of people locating numerous nestling parakeets shortly before complete disappearance of the birds around 1866 from one local region of se. Nebraska.However, beyond the generality that we should probably look more toward mortality factors than reproductive factors, the identification of the specific causes most crucially involved in the species’ demise is a difficult task of attempting to reconstruct reality from the random bits and pieces in historical accounts. The task is not so much a matter of trying to discover negative forces on the species as one of discriminating the comparative importances of the many negative forces that were surely involved.By far the most perceptive effort to achieve order out of the chaos of accounts has been provided by McKinley (1960: 282–283), who was disinclined to conclude that the primary causes of extinction were as obvious as they are often portrayed. His evaluation of the importance of various factors, with which we agree almost entirely, as far as it goes, was presented most succinctly in his 1960 account of the species in Missouri:“The birds’ passing is a mystery. They were undoubtedly held in disfavor for their destruction of fruit, but that point ought not to be overemphasized. They never appeared on a bounty list, and they were almost totally ignored in the county histories. Surely, if they were ever a scourge to agriculture, their names would have appeared more commonly on the pages of these two records of materialism and manifest destiny. Some were probably shot for food or other uses, but the number could not have been great. More often, perhaps, they were shot because they furnished an easy, returning target.“Primeval numbers of parakeets are not easy to guess at: they were noisy, colorful, and conspicuous birds that went about in flocks; the extent of their wanderings is not known. That is, probably anyone with an eye for birds would see them; and if they wandered very much, one flock might be seen by people in different areas. Perhaps they had a liking for the kind of habitat created by man, at least for purposes of feeding; if so, the lack of a general sentiment in pioneer society for their protection may have been their downfall. The possibility that disease was responsible cannot be ruled out, but except for a suggestion of ‘apoplexy,’ I have no evidence for it.“Since parakeets used hollow trees for roosting and nesting, there may have been connections between the disappearance of the birds and the wholesale cutting of ‘bee trees.’ The European honey bee barely preceded the American white man in invading the central parts of America, and it became extremely abundant within a short time. I am convinced, by numerous references collected during a search through early literature, that the magnitude of destruction of hollow trees by ‘bee hunters’ in search of honey and wax is little appreciated. What effect, if any, that had on the parakeet is unknown. Perhaps the bees themselves discouraged nesting and roosting flocks of parakeets. Reasons for their decline are made doubly difficult to evaluate by the lack of knowledge of the breeding biology, habitat, and social requirements of the species.”ShootingMcKinley’s (1960) reservations about the importance of shooting to protect crops were greatly expanded and bolstered in his 1966 and 1980 accounts and echo the accounts of Scott (1888, 1889, 1898), Chapman (1932), and Bailey (1925) for the parakeets in Florida. Shooting nevertheless has long been the favorite explanation for the species’ disappearance, perhaps largely tracing back to the renowned account of vengeful mayhem provided by Audubon (1831: 136):“The Parrot does not satisfy himself with Cockleburs, but eats or destroys every kind of fruit indiscriminately, and on this account is always an unwelcome visitor to the planter, the farmer, or the gardener. The stacks of grain put up in the field are resorted to by flocks of these birds, which frequently cover them so entirely, that they present to the eye the same effect as if a brilliantly colored carpet had been thrown over them. They cling around the whole stack, pull out the straws, and destroy twice as much of the grain as would suffice to satisfy their hunger. They assail the Pear and Apple-trees when the fruit is yet very small and far from being ripe, and this merely for the sake of the seeds. As on the stalks of Corn, they alight on the Apple-trees of our orchards, or the Pear-trees in the gardens, in great numbers and, as if through mere mischief, pluck off the fruits, open them up to the core, and disappointed at the sight of the seeds, which are yet soft and of a milky consistence, drop the apple or pear, and pluck another, passing from branch to branch, until the trees which were before so promising are left completely stripped, like the ship water-logged and abandoned by its crew, floating on the yet agitated waves, after the tempest has ceased. They visit the Mulberries, Pecan-nuts, Grapes, and even the seeds of the Dog-wood, before they are ripe, and on all commit similar depredations. The Maize alone never attracts their notice.“Do not imagine, reader, that these outrages are borne without severe retaliation on the part of the planters. So far from this, the Parakeets are destroyed in great numbers, for whilst busily engaged in plucking off the fruits or tearing the grain from the stacks, the husbandman approaches them with perfect ease, and commits great slaughter among them. All the survivors rise, shriek, fly around about for a few minutes, and again alight on the very place of most imminent danger. The gun is kept at work; eight or ten, or even twenty, are killed at every discharge. The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions, sweep over their bodies screaming as loud as ever, but still return to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive, that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his ammunition. I have seen several hundreds destroyed in this manner in the course of a few hours, and have procured a basketful of these birds at a few shots, in order to make choice of good specimens for drawing the figures by which this species is represented in the plate now under your consideration.”Audubon’s account was far from the only account of the ease of slaughtering parakeets. Other similar firsthand accounts were presented by Wilson (1811: 92), Townsend (1839: 20–24), Maynard (1881: 251), and G. de Beaumont (in Pierson 1938: 594), and it cannot be doubted that the species was extraordinarily vulnerable to shooting. Further, the widespread extent of wildlife shooting in bygone eras is sometimes difficult to comprehend from a modern perspective. An astonishingly high proportion of the early accounts of the species mention shooting of the birds observed, surely an impressive testimony to the former social acceptability of killing Carolina Parakeets—for reasons ranging from scientific collecting, to hunting for food, to feather-hunting, to protection of agricultural crops, to nothing more than curiosity or sport.It is also relevant to note here that the pattern of extinction of various psittacine species in the West Indies indicates that parakeets tended to be much more susceptible to disappearance than the larger Amazona parrots, and the primary causal factor for this difference may well be the greater tendency of parakeets to become crop pests (Snyder et al. 1987). Thus many of the original amazons of the Lesser Antillean islands still persist today, while the parakeets of these islands all disappeared centuries ago, a situation also found in Puerto Rico. And on Hispaniola and Cuba at the present time, it is par-akeets, not the amazons, that are most usually slaughtered for crop depredations and are in most imminent danger of extinction (J. Wiley pers. comm.).