The Beehive Collective will present the story of coal across time and how it is affecting our health, the environment and the economy.

Co-sponsored by IWU’s Sierra Student Coalition with support from Student Senate and the IWU Environmental Studies Program.

The Echoes of their Wings: The Life and Legacy of the Passenger Pigeon

Joel Greenberg, naturalist, writer, and environmental consultant, will speak about the legacy of the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon was unlike any other bird. It probably numbered in the billions, making it the most abundant bird in North America, if not the world. But this huge population was neither evenly distributed across the landscape nor was it any way cryptic: the species often formed aggregations so vast they are difficult for us to imagine. But despite that abundance, exploitation for food and recreation destroyed the species in the wild by the first few years of the 20th century. On Sept. 1, 1914, Martha, the last of the species, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. This talk explores the story of the bird and highlights the important lessons that it presents to those of us in the 21st century. Sponsor: John Wesley Powell Audubon, IWU Biology Department and the IWU Environmental Studies program