Back from the dead? A modern-day resurrection story...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers the Ivory-billed Woodpecker locally extinct in North America, but it was never officially listed that way. And now, sixty years since the last confirmed sighting of the bird, a group of wildlife scientists think they have rediscovered it in a cypress swamp in eastern Arkansas. Their findings were published in Science on April 28, and include multiple sightings and frame-by-frame analysis of a few seconds of video footage.
Birders spotted the bird or birds in 2004, but the sightings were kept quiet to give conservation groups and state and federal officials time to protect the birds' habitat.
Ivory-billed Woodpeckers strip the bark off large, dead hardwood trees as they search for beetle larvae to eat, and a breeding pair needs a large territory. The deep, swampy forests of the birds' historic range were heavily logged in the 19th and early 20th centuries, contributing to the birds??? decline. (Bird collectors also had something to do with it, once the population started to dwindle) But some of those forests have been allowed to grow back and are maturing, providing habitat for the birds.
At least one bird - a male - has been seen. And since Ivory-bills only live for 15 years or so, there must be at least a few of them still breeding somewhere.
Here's the story of one birder's sighting of the woodpecker.
National Geographic Society/NPR's "Radio Expeditions" features a few stories on the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. You can also listen to a recording of the bird made in 1935, and read about a failed 30-day search for the birds in 2002.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been involved in the search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker for decades. You can see video from 1935 and 2004, and read a lot more.
Want to know how to identify an Ivory-billed Woodpecker?
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The search for the ivory-billed woodpecker in the swamps of Arkansas has ended for the season without a confirmed sighting. Ornithologists--scientists who study birds--plan to search again in the late fall.
The Associated Press today reported the rediscovery of two species in California long thought extinct.
Jenny McCune, an assistant plant ecologist for the Catalina Island Conservancy, found a patch of California dissanthelium (Dissanthelium californicum) on March 30. (Other scientists confirmed the find last month.) The plant hadn't been seen since 1912.
Earlier in May, student botanist Michael Park found a patch of Mount Diablo buckwheat (Eriogonum truncatum), last seen in 1936, in a remote area of Mount Diablo State Park.
IT WOULD BE GREAT IF YOU COULD HAVE SOME PICTURES.
The search is about to start again. This article discusses plans by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to search for more ivory-billed woodpeckers this winter.
The search is on for the ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas.
At least some scientists doubt that the bird found in Arkansas in 2004 was really an ivory-billed woodpecker. They think it was probably a pileated woodpecker, which is smaller, but otherwise strongly resembles the ivory-billed. Other scientists disagree. The search for more conclusive evidence continues.
A new group of scientists is reporting having seen (14 times) and heard (and recorded) ivory-billed woodpeckers along the Choctawhatchee River in the Florida Panhandle.
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