ITJ 36-38/2024
Dear readers,
You may remember our story (in the ITJ Daily of 4 September 2020) about the roughly 400 pigeons that helped found airmail services by flying messages in and out of besieged Paris between September 1870 and January 1871.
Do you know about Martha too? This was the name of the last passenger pigeon, which died in Cincinnati zoo on 1 September 1914. That the species would ever die out was simply inconceivable just a few decades earlier. It was estimated that there were 3-5 billion specimens alive at the beginning of the 19th century, making it one of the most common species of bird worldwide. But then humans came along and decimated the species in a way that makes the culling of the bison population seem harmless by comparison.
The passenger pigeon’s fate can serve as a warning for us and our industry to be more thoughtful in our treatment of nature and its limited resources. Today’s waste can be tomorrow’s raw material, which will then require the concomitant logistics services (see page 17).
Sustainability will certainly also be writ large at the 61st Fiata World Congress at the end of September, with one evening session scheduled for Panama’s museum of biodiversity.
Perhaps we can discuss this issue there?
Yours,
Andreas Haug
Editor-in-chief