Questionable quotes from Tim Barksdale

Cornell search team member Tim Barksdale said some pretty controversial things in this May email. Below I've included some snippets from Tim in black, along with my comments in red (the bold font is mine):
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I am 100% convinced that David Kullivan had a pair of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Pearl River in 2000.

One hundred percent?! To review, Kullivan said he saw two Ivory-bills on April Fool's Day, 1999. Massive follow-up searches turned up nothing. Being 100% convinced at this point seems wildly optimistic.

[In Arkansas] we found several cavities that clearly were made by Ivory-bills although these showed no signs of recent use.

Clearly?!

But - I doubt that if a bird is trap-lining a large feeding territory in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee that it is the same bird that is using the areas in Arkansas.

It just doesn't seem reasonable to postulate a single Ivory-bill with a regular feeding territory hundreds of square miles in size, spread over 3-4 states.

Our bird in Arkansas, fledged from somewhere within the past 15 years. So there were 3 Ivorybills at the time of fledging. Could the source pair have been in the Pearl River? Yes. Could the source pair have been in a remote remnant forest swamp in northern Florida? Yes.

I agree that it is theoretically possible that an Ivory-bill was born in Florida and then inexplicably flew hundreds of miles to settle in marginal habitat in Arkansas. I just don't think that it's likely enough to seriously consider.

Let things in Brinkley settle down a bit. Then plan on visiting either Cache River NWR or White River NWR. We had indications but never confirmation of more than one bird in this vast area of over 300,000 acres. Unfortunately, only sections of this area are undisturbed and there are no virgin tracts. Few key areas still remain to be searched. But we have only used transects in 8% of this huge area.

On this point, Barksdale confirms my point #1 thinking here.