Posted on 04/28/2005 7:15:51 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
Morning Edition, April 28, 2005 · A group of wildlife scientists believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. They say they have made seven firm sightings of the bird in central Arkansas. The landmark find caps a search that began more than 60 years ago, after biologists said North America’s largest woodpecker had become extinct in the United States.
The large, showy bird is an American legend -- it disappeared when the big bottomland forests of North America were logged, and relentless searches have produced only false alarms. Now, in an intensive year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working together as part of the Big Woods Partnership, an ivory-billed male has been captured on video.
"We have solid evidence, there are solid sightings, this bird is here," says Tim Barksdale, a wildlife photographer and biologist.
For an NPR/National Geographic Radio Expeditions story, NPR science correspondent Christopher Joyce joined the search last January along Arkansas’ White River, where a kayaker spotted what he believed to be an ivory-billed woodpecker more than a year ago. Many other similar sightings over the last 60 years have raised false hopes.
But this time, Joyce reports that experts associated with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in New York and The Nature Conservancy were able to confirm the sighting. They kept the find a secret for more than a year, partly to give conservation groups and government agencies time to protect the bird’s habitat.
The Nature Conservancy has been buying and protecting land along the White and Cache Rivers for years, along with the state and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service. Since the discovery, they've bought more land to protect the bird.
There is a known sub-species of the Ivory-Billed there in Cuba. Finding a real Ivory-Billed in Cuba would be as astounding as the find here in America. Note--Cuba was a former range of the Ivory-Billed.
Good question.
I know the Ivory-Billed needs a 3 sq mile minimum of near perfect habitat. I believe you will find that the pilleated woodpecker needs a much smaller habitat and can adapt more easily.
You have the pilleated woodpecker, not the Ivory-Billed.
They all taste a little like chicken.
Pardon me if I have offended anyone with my typing the "O" in g-d. I see everyone uses the abbreviated form. You can see I don't often post because I am not sure why it's done that way.
My first reaction to this story was to squeal and jump up and down... I've been a birder since I was just a little girl, and this is huge, huge news!!
I pray that someday I will be able to see one - they are truly a magnificent example of God's handiwork.
I hope there is more than just this lone male. This is really exciting news.
At one point I felt totally alienated from conservtism (which I'd always identified with) because my Biblical beliefs made me pro-Israel, and I found much to my shock that most conservatives (at that time) were anti-Israel. I'd been listening to short wave radio and was used to hearing Israel and Zionism blasted by the radio stations of Communist governments, and here was the same stuff being preached by conservatives in the name of anti-Communism! Of course things are a little different today, but believe me, back in the Seventies and early Eighties the situation was bleak. Even Jesse Helms was anti-Israel at one point (I even had an argument through the mail with him) before finally seeing the light.
As for conservatism and nature, the ironic thing is that conservatism contains decidedly agrarian and anti-industrial strains (such as the Southern agrarians), yet I notice that these loud critics of "yankee industrialism" never seem to say much about the attacks on G-d's creatures made in the name of conservatism, being too busy defending the Confederacy. Unfortunately, there is in fact a connection between the extreme "green" and "animal rights" positions and the (European-style) Far Right. "Aryan nationalists" have always insisted that the Jews are "alienated from nature" and "alienated from the soil" (and there are some idiots who actually believe that the Jews have never practiced agriculture), and these sinister movements have boasted that they have penetrated the green and animal rights movements (Hitler, mach shemo, was a vegetarian). I consider the attacks on people like me by nature-worshipping pagans and atheist scientists to be in the same tradition as the anti-Semitic movement.
Anyway, don't get the wrong idea about me. I'm an extreme, ultra-Biblical Fundamentalist. In fact, I'm so fundamental that I'm not even a chr*stian (I'm a Noachide), which means that I accept the Biblical G-d and no other and believe that the Holy Torah is the blueprint of Creation and was dictated to Moses letter for letter. The "wise men" of our generation may think such a position irreconcilable with a love of G-d's creatures, but I don't see the logic of that claim.
I just hope it isn't this lone male woodpecker.
I forgot to comment on this in my last post.
Once upon a time the "secular humanists" of the Left loudly insisted that "man is the measure of all things" while Theists equally loudly insisted that man was a "worm." How things have changed. Now the Left advocates voluntary human extinction and religious people have adopted the old secular humanist battle cry.
Such illogic makes me ill.
That's some big pecker.
Why, thank you for making a thread about a wonderful discovery into a tirade for your personal religious beliefs.
You're welcome. Now why don't you tell me that I'm "alienated from nature" because I worship the "Jew G-d" and that only atheist materialists like you believe in the utter meaninglessness of everything have the right to feel awe of nature. I didn't know Ayn Rand was a bird watcher.
Kindly make a personal contribution to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Either that or go stick your head in some man-made concrete building and leave the contemplation of Nature to those of us who know it's all in the Torah.
Great posts all. I have been trying to dispell the environmentalist wacko label for some time here. It's seems the majority of conservatives have taken a reactionary position that I would expect from liberals on environmental issues. Its not enough to just say that bigger government, more rules, and more regulations aren't the answer to our environmental problems, conservatives have to go out and try to say there are no environmental problems.
Let me know if you want on my Enviro-Con ping list!
I don't see them often, but I hear them. Once you hear them you don't forget.
They're common in North florida because it only takes a couple of decades to get "old growth". What that means to a woodpecker seems to be trees with diseased limbs. You get that here because lightening strips away a lot of tree bark, leaving openings for bugs and such.
I see a Pileated in my yard just about every week. I wonder why they are not extinct?
I don't see them often, but I hear them. Once you hear them you don't forget.
We have pileateds here too. I love to hear them. They sound like a Tarzan movie.
Ironically, the call of the ivory billed (an old recording of which can be found online) doesn't sound nearly as exotic.
Doubtful the bird was one of these. We call them "cock-of-the-woods" here.
I wonder if he'll be chattering that mindless clap if the honeybee becomes extinct..... Honey bees are lucky to have lived this long. They are not a native species, anyways.
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