Friday, September 16, 2005

Tim Barksdale says "$35 million" raised

According to this article (free registration required), Tim Barksdale spoke at Pittsburg State University last night.

Here's a snippet:
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"We've raised $35 million so far to build habitat," Barksdale said.

He also believes that there are probably ivory-bills in other locations as well. "These birds have a 33-inch wing span, and they are powerful flyers," he said. "In Big Oak Tree State Park in Missouri I observed that bark on several trees was scaled, just the way ivory-bills do in their search for the beetle grubs that live under the bark. If ivory-bills didn't do it, I don't know what did."

He added that the devastation caused by recent hurricanes, as bad as it has been for humans, may actually benefit the woodpeckers.
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Regarding the bark scaling in Missouri--here's one possibility. Another is mentioned by Jerome Jackson on page 246 of "In Search of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker":
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Extensive scaling can also be caused by hunters who use a type of deer stand that clamps around a tree and is pushed higher and higher as the hunter climbs. Each time the hunter puts his or her weight on the stand, it bites into the bark, holding the hunter at that level. Each of those bites loosens bark, often causing it to fall away from the tree.
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