Like me, you may strongly favor efforts to protect endangered birds known to actually exist. If so, you may cringe to see the Ivory-bill listed here--it's not unlike placing Bigfoot front-and-center on a list of America's most endangered mammals.
Note that for each of the other nine species on the list, color photos are provided. For the Ivory-bill, only a color illustration is provided.
Audubon also helpfully provides a list of 10 "Myths and Facts" (PDF) about the Endangered Species Act.
Here is #4:
4. MYTH: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists frequently use “junk” or faulty and incomplete science which leads to incorrect listing and habitat designation decisions.
FACT: While any group or individual may petition the federal government to list a species as endangered or threatened, to succeed the petition must address several statutory listing criteria, be based on the best scientific data available and go through a series of rigorous reviews and peer review. As a result, decisions to list a species are rarely, if ever, reversed due to inadequate science. The same is true for habitat designation decisions. Overall, while there is seldom unanimous agreement among scientists, the science behind the decisions made under the ESA is rarely found to be inaccurate. A 2003 Government Accountability Office report found that only 10 of the more than 1,200 domestic listed species were delisted after new scientific information surfaced indicating that the original listing decision was not warranted.
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6 comments:
This is a beautiful document ... really well done and I'm sure that it will do much to aid conservation and protection of habitat.
I wonder why Audubon was able to use crisp clear color photography for all of the the endangered birds EXCEPT the IBWO ... we have a perfectly good picture in frame 33.3 ... don't we?
I also noticed that the mapped range of the IBWO is a perfect circle.
Cornell et al are not in the bird business. They are in the fish business! Tom shoots the fish in the barrel and Cornell and friends just release more into the barrel.
Not sure who wins this.
I went to the local library wearing my new Ivory-billed Woodpecker T-shirt. The nice lady behind the desk asked me about the shirt and said how nice it was that they still lived.
I told her that they don't. But it didn't faze her. She just immediately and sweetly stated that she "knew" they were out there. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this is what makes up much of Audubon's constituency.
"Faith" is not just the first name of a country and western singer.
In all fairness, if (and its a big if) the Ivory-billed is still alive, then it would be the #1 bird conservation target in the continental US. So Audubon is probably supporting the efforts of Cornell and others to determine if the bird is still around. You can debate about how much money and effort should go into this search, but given the tantilizing claims, you have to at least follow up on them. If it is shown that every one of the reports is a mistake, stringy, or unverifiable, then Auduobn and others will move on to the other birds on the priority list. But for now, its worth supporting efforts to look for the bird. This may all change if nothing shows up by the (rapidly approaching) end of the field season. As a current document, the Audubon list is OK. But a future list might not have the bird on there if nobody can find one.
National Audubon has a proud history of fighting for wetlands, including hardwood bottomlands, for 100 years. Longer than most.
They used to speak truth to power. They never before needed bogus bird sightings to push the rightness of their cause.
all I asked was why is audubon using color photos for all the other endangered birds, but using an Audubon lithograph for the IBWO?
Why treat the other 9 top endangered birds in NA to a full on "headshot" color picture and then diss the IBWO as a "lithograph" ... it just seems wrong to me.
Don't misinterperet, I've never said that anyone should stop looking for IBWO. I look for them every day. When I see a woodpecker I make a mental note of whether or not it has the field marks of an IBWO.
I'm just asking ... why no good color photos?
I mean if you can get a picture of an ashy storm petrel ... which is noctournal and pelagic, why can't you get a picture of a large bird that is diurnal and lives near an interstate highway??
PS please don't try to tell me that it is because the ashy petrel can be caught and photographed in the hand because it nests in a hole in the ground ...
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