Reality setting in at The Advocate?

Check out the muted language in this opinion piece from today's The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA).

Excerpts (the bold font is mine):

The ivory-billed woodpecker, a crow-sized bird with a prominent ivory bill, once was fairly common in the hardwood forests of the southeastern United States. Extensive logging operations deprived the bird of its habit. Since then, the bird’s absence has made it a seemingly mythical figure to many, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster.
...
We do not believe that Audubon, who was worried about the effects of development long before such concerns became fashionable, would be surprised to know that the ivory-billed woodpecker is quite possibly extinct today. But we’ll cross our fingers, as many others are doing, and hope the bird hasn’t vanished into history.