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.
Supposedly there's an article being released on Science online some time later today.
bump (wow)
That is indeed huge news, if true. BUMP.
I will have to send this to my dad.
If they're looking for another "pecker" from Arkansas...we've got one in New York.
Two. I am not convinced Hitlery is a woman.
Finally I can use Great-Grandad's old recipe.
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
woodpecker ping
ping
If there is a place where these birds could survive it would have to be someplace like the Cache River area. The Cache River Refuge contains a variety of wetland communities including some of the most intact and least disturbed bottomland hardwood forest in the Mississippi Valley region. A vast place of primeval beauty.
(Birder joke)
I doubt that there's a hidden flock of passenger pigeons somewhere though.
However, I can tell you that for miles around the property values will plunge because the ivory billed woodpecker MIGHT come on your property therefore you won't be allowed to so much as clear underbrush, much less build a house.
I can't wait to see the video. But, OTOH, it's just another "peckerhead" story from Arkansas. [ducking]
Makes sense, and it's not one of the places that people have done really intensive searches in the past. Last major search I heard of was at Pearl River in Mississippi/Louisiana.
The big question will be, how many of them are there.
The anti-private property front now has a Woody for a poster boy....
Where's my shotgun? If it flies, it dies.
True. They could use this to shut down much of the South. It's a big bird and needs a big range. If you though spotted owls were bad, this sucker's way more photogenic and romantic.
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