The North American heath hen was also the subject of an early protective bill, introduced to New York State legislature in 1791, but it too failed to save the species from extinction. Heath hens were once native to much of the northeast United States, and were so plentiful that their meat eventually gained a reputation for being “poor man’s food.” Nonetheless they continued to be hunted in such vast numbers that by the mid-1800s there were no hens at all left on the entire American mainland. The bird’s final stronghold was Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, but illegal poaching, diseases carried by domestic poultry, and predation from feral cats caused numbers on the island to fall to less than 100 by the mid-1890s.