I just read a good article about the passenger pigeon [1]. It was originally published in Audubon, but I read it in a book called "The Best American Science and Nature Writing - 2015".

[1] http://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-...

> Naturalists in the 1800's would wipe out entire species getting specimens.

This is the first time I hear this. Do you have examples?

Here is an article about collecting rare species:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/1...

People forget all those beautiful paintings from the Audoban Society were made by killing the bird, stuffing it, and then painting the stuffed bird.

The example I'd like to share is more from naturalists that would explore tropical islands in the Pacific, but that's not right at hand at the moment, as the examples were in one of those dusty books a friend had one time. But bird populations in decline in tropical islands is a big problem, especially because of the evolutionary niche they have:

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-hawaii-n...