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5 comments:
That Collinson! He thinks he is so smart with all his facts and reasoning and stuff. But if he spent 30 years in the woods of the Southeastern US like some of us he wouldn't be talking like that. Plus I met Brian Rolek and he is very credible.
/TB off
I nominate Louis Bevier as America's Collinson, but we need more top people to loudly proclaim that the emperor has not clothes. I've spoken to one excellent birder after another; people who sit and chair records committees, people who write cutting edge ID articles, people who are consulted for field guides. Not one of them believes the evidence is even compelling.
We need more top people to be more vocal about their opinions. The ABA records committee rolled over with a political dodge meant to not offend their membership, another sign of the continuing irrelevance of ABA.
U.S. Announces Recovery Plan for a Ghost Bird
–ERIK STOKSTAD
31 AUGUST 2007 VOL 317 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
Find them. That’s the top priority in the
effort to save the ivory-billed woodpecker,
outlined in a draft plan last week by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). But
many critics fear that the charismatic bird is
already extinct and worry that the $27 million
plan will mean less money for conserving
other endangered species.
Ivorybills (Campephilus principalis) were
on the original federal list of endangered
species in 1967. The last confirmed sightings
of the large woodpeckers were in Louisiana in
1944. But in 2005, a team led by the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology announced that it had evidence
that at least one male was alive and flapping
in Arkansas, a stunning claim that has
since attracted vigo rous skept ici sm
(Science, 17 August, p. 888). Right after the
announcement, FWS convened experts to figure
out how to help the species bounce back.
The 182-page plan offers a detailed list of
activities, many of which FWS is already
either conducting or funding. The main task is
to expand the search for the birds, now done
mainly by a few academics, volunteers, and
state wildlife agencies. Also high on the list
are characterizing its habitat and developing
computer models to project a healthy population
size. These efforts, plus managing habitat,
would cost $27.8 million over 5 years.
That price tag, in an era of scarce
resources, makes some biologists shudder.
“We put other species more at risk by focusing
on a bird we can’t find,” says Louis
Bevier, an ornithologist and research associate
at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
FWS estimates it will have spent $1.1 million
this year on the ivorybills, compared with a
median expenditure in 2004 of $5500 per
threatened or endangered species.
Chris Elphick of the University of Connecticut,
Storrs, says the recovery plan gives
short shrift to those who question the recent
sightings in Arkansas. But FWS’s Laurie
Fenwood, who coordinates the recovery
effort, says that the evidence was strong
enough to compel the agency to act.
The plan is open for public comment
until 22 October and will be reviewed by The
Wildlife Society, a nonprof it scientif ic
group in Bethesda, Maryland. A final version
of the plan should be ready next year.
And don’t accuse FWS bureaucrats of negative
thinking: If all goes well, the report says,
the ivory-billed woodpecker could come off
the endangered species list in 2075.
sheesh, they even are developing new methods for disguising the fact from themselves that they have no evidence ... talk about a convoluted constuction "findings in the search for evidence"
why not just call the session, "Convincing ourselves to spend 28million dispite having no evidence after using every known method of looking?"
From this web site:
http://www.partnersinflight.org/events/mcallen/callforpapers.pdf
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Tools, Techniques, and Findings in the Search for Evidence – Laurie Fenwood, Ron Rohrbaugh
Fitz really has set up a Junta in F&WS to run the recovery plan. Here she is "co presenting" with Rorbaugh ... nice.
Question, what was wrong with Jerry Jackson's leadership of the F&WS process ... i mean back before cornell "found" the bird, he was in charge, why did they fire him??
Robert L. Pitman, a marine ecologist who studies seabirds and cetaceans (he's a birder too), gives it to us straight. Regarding an unidentifiable video claiming to show the Baiji, recently thought to have gone extinct, he says here that it “has now joined the ranks of the thylacine, ivory-billed woodpecker, the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot: although sightings of the aforementioned are largely or entirely discredited by the scientific community, reports will continue to dribble in indefinitely.” Martin Collinson linked to the recent Loch Ness claim on his blog.
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