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24 comments:
Pretty tongue-in-cheek article until the last makes-you-want-to-gag paragraph.
I am a Skeptic. I do not hope that the IBWO still exists. Why? Because hoping and wishing have nothing to do with it. No matter how much believers or Skeptics hope it won't matter. The bird is extinct.
Just go with the facts and you come to the obvious conclusion. Yes, the negative is proven. The IBWO is a dead as the dodo bird.
HI:
Also check out the photo gallery especially photos 4 and 5.
This note accompanies gallery image number 4: "The birds were doomed in large part by unchecked logging."
Note that image number four shows 61 "collected" IBWO carcasses. What would they be worth today, alive?
"that we could bring back in the United States of America one big piece of land that looks like it did when Audubon was here? The answer is yes. There's the place to do it. And whether or not the ivorybill ends up persisting out there is totally irrelevant. What the ivorybill tells us is not irrelevant. It tells us that we have opportunities that we can take, or we can not take. We should take them."
I thought Fitzcrow was an ornithologist? If he is going to suggest a "big piece of land" to "bring back" isn't "the place to do it" a place with numerous or very special endangered, endemic birds? Nowhere in Arkansas qualifies in my opinion, as even Swainson's Warblers are rather widespread. Apparently neither the presence of IBWO nor other significant birds are critical in determining his conservation priorities. Is there any science here? And if so, is it ornithology?
No ivory-bill has ever spoken to me, nor to Tom or Amy as far as I know, for obvious reasons, so we'll have to take Fitz's word for its views on opportunities we can take or not take.
HI:
I think at least 3 of the specimens in photo number 4 are Pileated Woodpeckers. An ornithological version of "Where's Waldo?".
Which of these specimens do you think are not Ivory-billed, in photo #4? None of them look like Pileateds to me.
--R
They're all IBWO. You make the mistake of looking for the white triangle on the dorsal side (when some of the specimens are showing the ventral side). If you look at the heads, you'll see they are all IBWO. I wish more of the observations had details about the head.
HI:
Sorry about that! I guess I need to get a better color monitor for my computer! I wonder if that has happened in real life: Someone mistaking an IBWO for a Pileated?
No ivory-bill has ever spoken to me, nor to Tom or Amy as far as I know
Well, except for those phone calls last week.
"Remote camera techniques painstakingly created by the search team have shown that the kind of bark scaling once thought to be the work of ivorybills is also commonly done by pileateds."
So where's the Science article by CLO about that? Where's the analysis on the scaling? Where's the statement that scaling isn't a reliable way to determine the existence of Ivory-billeds?
Wish, I could have seen an Imperial Woodpecker, wow!
Where is El Carpinterio.
___________________________
Damn - I hate that truck on I-40 that killed the last existing IBWO.
"For its part, the Cornell team points out that it never claimed anything other than that there was a single individual present on seven particular days during a span of 14 months."
But the entire point of us skeptics is that this claim is the source of all the bulls*** we're seeing today.
Cornell claimed there was definite proof of a bird. The video, their single best piece of evidence, has now been eviscerated by the best field birders in the U.S. Even CLO doesn't claim the audio info as proof. That leaves a handful of sightings, all for just a few seconds in flight. These types of observations are notoriously problematic.
Despite the fact that their evidence is in tatters, Cornell will not retract their definitiveness and simply state that they can't be sure. That's not science. That's dogma.
"That's not science. That's dogma."
I think the same truck that hit the IBWO on Interstate 40 also ran over Fitzcrow's dogma and side-swiped his karma.
Despite the fact that their evidence is in tatters, Cornell will not retract their definitiveness and simply state that they can't be sure
They don't have to. Hillcrow and Auburn have let Fitzcrow escape some of the wrath of history. If Hillcrow didn't exist, Fitzcrow would have had to invent him.
Auburn is the greatest gift to Ivy ornithology since Robert Porter Allen. You can blast the CLO all you want. Yes, I know, it's hard to believe. But someone stupider that Fitzcrow entered this story of fame gone bad.
Only one question remains. Is John Arvin stupider than Hillcrow?
Stay tuned.
While the skeptics are almost certainly correct that the Ivory-bill is extinct, I wish you all would not disparage the White River ecosystem. It is worthy of preservation because it is the largest Mississippi bottomland forest that remains. As a wintering site for waterfowl it is unparalled. It has the largest concentration of Louisiana subspecies of Black Bear (maybe the only viable one). It has significant stands of old-growth forest including some millenium old stands of cypress. So yes, as far as containing significant endangered species, it is not that important, but in terms of an example of a functioning ecosytem with most of its parts intact, it is priceless.
"...it is priceless"
Unfortunately, it's not priceless. There's a price on the lumber, on the water, on the bare land after logging, as a dump for waste, etc.
That's the whole point. If it was priceless, then either no one would want it or no one could afford it.
Not only do people want swamps for all the uses above but they can afford them.
Anonymous said..
"... I wish you all would not disparage the White River ecosystem. It is worthy of preservation because it is the largest Mississippi bottomland forest that remains."
Are you saying that it is worthy of preservation, even WITHOUT an extinct bird living there? Truly on it's own merit? What are the odds that TNC and/or other conversation groups will continue to support preservation of the area while MAKING NO MENTION OF IBWO? Not in our lifetime. If preserving the White River ecosystem plays into their scheme, they will play the Ivory-billed card. Simply because sensationalism trumps common sense when dealing with an unsuspecting public. And, by the way, if the area is worth preserving, you could make the same case for lots of other Mississipian tracts in other southern states.
First of all, priceless is a figure of speech. Obviously there is a price one can pay for land!
TNC was actively engaged in buying and reforesting land before the IBWO debacle. And yes, that was my point. The White River refuge and surrounding areas are worthy of preservation regardless of IBWO because the area already supports healthy populations of many rare animals and plants.
And let's face it. The TNC got duped by CLO too, just like a lot of people. They made the same assumption that a lot of us did at first, which was the CLO wasn't delusional.
"First of all, priceless is a figure of speech. "
Yes, but words mean something, or they should. This is a blog followed by some pretty smart people. Saying that the White River ecosystem is "priceless" is a statement that is worthless here.
That statement has lost it's wow-factor. It's over used and, as I pointed, is often not true. The reason we fight and argue over great ecosystems is because economics does place a price on such systems. Otherwise, only the birds would care.
Even we enviros are constantly placing prices on ecosystems. For their tourist value, for their watershed values, for their sustainable harvesting values and on and on.
Jeb Bush sold the swamps around and in the St Joe lands and the new airport for what? Some past campaign contributions and maybe some future ones. The Choctafullahooyee was sold so cheap that even the rednecks living on its edges could have afforded it. If latte sipping NPR listeners would have let them buy it.
"no one, not even the Skeptics, wants to give up on the Maybe that means one last hope for the ghost bird."
As my moniker suggests I gave up on the Maybe long ago.
"no one, not even the Skeptics, wants to give up on the Maybe that means one last hope for the ghost bird."
As my moniker suggests I gave up on the Maybe long ago.
But did you want to?
I don't recall whether I wanted to give up on the Maybe or not. It was obvious to me even as a child birder in the late 1970's that the IBWO must be extinct, and it amazes me that grown people, many with PhDs in ornithology, spend their time seriously debating this issue in 2006.
It was obvious to me even as a child birder in the late 1970's that the IBWO must be extinct, and it amazes me that grown people, many with PhDs in ornithology, spend their time seriously debating this issue in 2006.
Hmm, that's something interesting to think about.
I sometimes wonder if it is my shortcoming in not being able to imagine that the IBWO could still exist or the TB's shortcoming for not being able to imagine that it is extinct.
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