However, the fantasy still lives in many places. Some examples as of 6/1/07:
1. The Big Woods Conservation partnership (Cornell, The Nature Conservancy, etc) site is proudly displaying the "found!" banner.
2. Some memorable videos are still available here, including some footage from that 4/28/05 press conference.
3. CLO is selling "found!" merchandise.
4. David Luneau is selling what he claims to be an Ivory-billed Woodpecker video.
5. The USFWS is officially defending the Luneau video. An excerpt from here (PDF):
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.6. The USFWS Ivory-bill "Recovery Team" page is still up.
7. The Eagle Optics page on Bobby Harrison is still up. An excerpt:
Eagle Optics is proud to announce sponsorship of Bobby Harrison’s search to capture the ultimate footage of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker — focusing on the Big Woods of Arkansas. Eagle Optics is also proud to bring you exclusive updates about his search on our website.8. The Birds of North America Online is still standing behind the rediscovery story.
9. The "Ivory-billed Expeditions" site is still up.
10. According to the Bird Records Committee of the Arkansas Audubon Society, the status of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas is "present".
11. The first sentence in the Wikipedia Ivory-bill page still says the bird is "extremely rare"; people have tried to add "or extinct" into that sentence, but that wording has always been removed.
12. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Bobby Harrison was still giving public lectures about his Ivory-bill sighting claims.
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15 comments:
"Eagle Optics is also proud to bring you exclusive updates about his [Bobby Harrison's] search on our website."
Okay now I get it. Bobby is actually searching websites now. And that is good news for donors and TBs. The website search should cut down on logistics expenses - especially if they have one of those "search" thingies up in the corner and Bobby can just enter "ivory-billed".
Don't know what Bobby does when Google responds "Did you mean Pileated?" but I am sure his foundation will let him give a presentation on that.
10. According to the Bird Records Committee of the Arkansas Audubon Society, the status of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas is "present".
Yes, and IBWO is proudly featured on the AAS Website Homepage as well....
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.
I think it is fair to say that that is an ignorant statement. Clearly it comes close to matching Pileateds if Jerome Jackson, David Sibley and many other top experts say that it IS a Pileated, almost no independant experts say the video is an Ivory-bill, and the vast majority of birding experts say the video is, at best, inconclusive.
Reference the Loch Ness video. Is it proof because no one has produced a video of an otter, sturgeon or swimming dog that will "come close to matching"?
On top of that, we've seen the Pileated videos that DO come close to matching.
And yet the Arkansas Bird Records Database still does not include any of the 2004-2005 sightings of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, while including numerous records of sightings of other species made since then (some as recent as April 2006).
Nice post, Tom. Kind of a TB's Wall of Shame, or at least it will be in a few years when there are still not pics to be seen.
the only way to end this circus for once and for all would be to have Hillcrow's team do Arkansas and Fitzcrow's team do Florida next year. Both teams would be sure to not find anything.
The true beneficial legacy of the IBWO believer hysteria is that it revealed the shaky credentials of many professional and amateur ornithologists, and we skeptics are happily keeping a list of all these characters for future (and past) scrutiny. [Someone IS keeping the list, right?]
This is absolutely hysterical!
I just love the "yes men" govt personnel defending the existence of the bird because it is the current policy. Previously, these same guys would have had the ivorybill spotters committed to an insane asylum. Amazing how scientists will contradict themselves in order to follow the party line.
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sheeeesh, what am I, chopped liver --- an entire dirty dozen and I don't garner a mention... I'm MORTIFIED, or have you reserved a specially-furnished rubber-lined room in Skeptic Purgatory just for me :-)
Cyberthrush:
You flatter yourself. Tom was listing various items that related to the players in the IBWO game. You are someone who has an infrequently updated blog with an anemic comments section and are to the IBWO "rediscovery" and its debunking what a fantasy football fan living in a van by the river is to the NFL.
Rather than deal in detail with the specifics of the strengths or weaknesses of evidence for the "rediscovery" or the plans for its "conservation" your musings frequently mention that:
1.saving the IBWO is the right thing to do
2. skeptics hope there is no discovery of evidence of IBWO existence
3. observers are afraid to make public their observations since they feel they will be ridiculed
4. only believers will be welcome at the grand celebration of hard evidence
5. if a species goes extinct you don't want to say it happened on your "watch".
etc.
In short you display the characteristics of a True Believer (try reading Eric Hoffer) that you find appalling in those in the current Administration.
But don't worry about Purgatory since there is a real natural world out there that is quickly going to Hell and I will see you there sooner or later if the conservation and birding community continues to think the IBWO story is worth any time or money.
Until then feel free to keep posting on Mike Collin's adventures in Limbo.
IBWO Pantheist
Dear Anonymous at 11:58 AM, June 03, 2007. Are you suggesting that skeptics like yourself will have it both ways--mocking the continuing failure to find Ivory-bills and then joining the celebration if (a big if) they are actually proven to persist? You sound like you are straddling the fence--like many others who choose to reserve judgement. And do you really think the natural world will go somewhere other than hell if the money if the conservation and birding community actually ceases to think the IBWO story is worth any time or money?
anonymous 8:44 AM, June 04, 2007 said... Are you suggesting that skeptics like yourself will have it both ways--mocking the continuing failure to find Ivory-bills and then joining the celebration if (a big if) they are actually proven to persist?
Most skeptics are not mocking the fact of the failure. They are mocking those who are trumpeting their failures as successes, such as garbage video, double knocks, calls, sub-2 second sightings, etc.
If something solid is produced, we're ready to look at it with an open mind. In the meantime, we'll continue to smack around people like Harrison, Collins, and CLO who loudly trumpet that their particular brand of garbage is "proof". Although Hill has not claimed "proof", he has overused the terms like "interesting" and "compelling".
If you need a clear difference between the skeptic and the true believe, here it is. Solid video or photos of a bird, and hopefully a refindable bird, will convince every skeptic out there. What analogous event would change the minds of even half the true believers? No photo for 5 years? 10 years? 100 years?
Anon at 8:44 AM, June 04, 2007:
Do you think the TBs can have it both ways - making a major announcement and public display with no real evidence and then doing the same thing with real proof a few years later? Wouldn't making a big deal out of any future evidence just point out the shakiness of their earlier "data"? What would any future major celebration say about their current claims that their initial observations were enough to prove existence?
And I think that as the world goes to hell if humans can't prevent it they should at least have intelligent discussions about what is going on and what is important. The IBWO fiasco that was initiated and is maintained by CLO provides neither.
"And do you really think the natural world will go somewhere other than hell if the money if the conservation and birding community actually ceases to think the IBWO story is worth any time or money?"
I have news for you which is that the serious birding community was only very briefly fooled by the "rediscovery" (if at all). Much of the "conservation" community to its discredit doesn't seem to care about empirical truth. If money is not spent on IBWO "recovery" there is some chance that it will go, not to hell, but to a worthy cause. I prefer conservation dollars to be spent on birds, not make believe stories.
3. observers are afraid to make public their observations since they feel they will be ridiculed
Are you saying that there are even more crazies out there?
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