FWS - Ivory-billed woodpecker Questions and Answers for the 2006-2007 search season, December 21, 2006
"There is at this time one published critique of the Luneau video, with the explanation presented that the bird in the video is more likely a normal pileated woodpecker. This alternative view is based primarily on differing interpretations of video artifacts and bird flight mechanics. The Service and its conservation partners consider most persuasive, among a number of reasons, the failure of all known videos showing pileated woodpeckers in flight to even come close to matching the characteristics present on the bird in the Luneau video in rejecting this alternative explanation."
How long can they hold to this position now? And just what are the implications of the following?:
"Q: What if the 2006/2007 search season still yields no conclusive evidence?
A: The Service still deems it imperative to continue with searches until conclusive evidence is gathered. Enough credible information has surfaced that leads our agency to believe that isolated populations of the species may still exist. It is our responsibility to ensure that we are making the appropriate decisions with regard to habitat management."
Open Thread
2 hours ago
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5 comments:
If the management approach of the USFWS is going to be that "we have to work on the assumption that the IBWO exists," then they and the Forest Service, BLM, etc., etc., should be consistent and also assume that Bachman's Warblers, Eskimo Curlews, etc. still exist and they should initiate appropriate habitat protection measures immediately. This should also be the policy for all the other species of management concern that we actually KNOW exist. Let's be consistent. Otherwise, why are we playing pretend with the IBWO?
The service should be careful here. They are contributing to the reasons that the ESA should be changed.
This is ironic since many of the Fish and Wildlife employees that transferred into the IBWO program are now getting out. They should at least clean up their legacy before they leave.
2007 is it. If they don't come up with anything real in AR, FL, LA, or some other state by the end of the year, and they still stand by their flimsy "evidence", they will have become full-fledged Bigfoot searchers.
It's a shame to see CLO go from a premier research institute to a field trip joke due to the continual compounding of one mistake. The mistake would have blown over. Years of failure to see the mistake, and backing it up with things like cardboard winged models, is just plain sad.
there is a beautiful symetry in the recent press on the collinson paper, collinson calls in some favors to get a bio med journal to run the paper, peer review and all.
then the Brits amp this to the AP in LONDON ... who spin it as Collinson v Fitzcrow ... and Fitzcrow comes out SWINGING.
CLO gets a little taste of the fruits of a limey mark com strategy.
Will Collinson back down? Will the media follow this to the door of Don Kenedy at AAAS (who has an office in the UK??)
Or will Fitzcrow fend off another challenge by being willing to punch hard and just flat out call the other guy WRONG?
My guess is that if this stain starts to make AAAS look bad ... that Fitz will be asked to fall on his sword, if he refuses, Kennedy's consience will force him to come clean with the "we rushed to pub and we were wrong". Science is bigger than Fitzcrow.
"Science is bigger than Fitzcrow"
Ornithology, birding, and Cornell should be too
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