Posted on 09/27/2006 12:32:28 AM PDT by neverdem
Once again, scientists report they have found evidence of ivory-billed woodpeckers, this time in Florida. But having observed the turbulent disputes among ornithologists and birders that followed the report last year that the bird had been found in Arkansas, these researchers are proceeding with caution.
Geoffrey Hill, of Auburn University in Alabama, and Daniel Mennill of the University of Windsor, in Ontario, both biologists and ornithologists, say 14 sightings and extensive sound recordings “provide evidence that ivory-billed woodpeckers may live along the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle.”
The report appears online in a Canadian journal, Avian Conservation and Ecology (www.ace-eco.org).
The ivory bill, the largest woodpecker in the United States, was thought to have gone extinct until scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and others reported in Science that at least one had been seen and videotaped in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas.
That claim was at first widely accepted and then vigorously disputed by bird experts and academic ornithologists who argued that the bird in a few seconds of blurry videotape cited in Science was a pileated woodpecker, a smaller, quite common bird. An extensive search in Arkansas last winter led by the Cornell lab did not produce conclusive evidence.
Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell lab, who had consulted with Dr. Hill about the findings before publication, said, “They’ve got a lot of intriguing evidence.”
“This is a perfect illustration of the fact,...”
--snip--
In a phone interview, Dr. Hill said only an indisputable photograph or DNA evidence would be scientifically conclusive. He said he knew how heated the subject of ivory bills had become, but asked, “Once we found them, what was I supposed to do?”
“The mistake,” he added dryly, “was ever looking for them.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Like the spotted owl, the Ivory should consider building nests in KMART signs.
or, even better ( this would piss-off the left more )....WALMART signs.
Reminds me of the crazy conspiracists who believe the plane on 9/11 was not really hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon, despite eyewitness accounts and recordings of cell phone calls of passengers in the doomed jet.
If the ivory bills share the same habitat with the pileated peckerwoods then the birders should look here in SE Tennessee. The woods here on the Cumberland Plateau are thick with pileated peckerwoods....
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