Searchers in Arkansas and north-west Florida will receive little encouragement from this latest broadside, which seems set to explode the myth of ‘rediscovered’ Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. With further searches having failed to reveal new evidence, the original claim is looking increasingly tentative.
Rohrbaugh says more survey work should be done in the vast White River area as well as the Wattensaw Wildlife Management Area. This year a hunter in Wattensaw reported watching a bird for many minutes that he later described as an ivory-bill.
"Well, the fantasy is true," said Fitzpatrick. "This most magnificent of all the North American birds, Audubon's romantic bird of the deep southern forest, this spectacular red-crested bird with huge white wings that people the world over would die to come and see if only it still existed--this bird lives."2. A quote put up on Cornell's web site in June 2007:
“If there is even the smallest chance that ivory-bills survive, then our goal is to find them,” says Ron Rohrbaugh, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Ivory-billed Woodpecker Research Project.(Thanks to Ilya Maclean for pointing out these quotes.)
Going back to basic reading comprehension,…”But he’s also 100 percent confident that he saw what he thinks he saw” are not my words. Say it aloud, Amy. Maybe you’ll get it.
Self-serving? I Don’t need to be. I’m fully content with who I am and what I do. My calendar is full of gratis or expense sharing programs that I provide FREE or at expense (cost of gas) for local clubs and organizations.
I have no books to sell or $1,000/day + expenses programs all about myself to impress 3rd graders to promote.
And, no. I have absoultely no interest in engaging in any betting with you, Amy (if that’s who you really are). Maybe you should stick to the horses.
Richard Guthrie
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which supports searches throughout the southeast, agrees there’s more to be done. "It is imperative we continue with searches for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker," said Chuck Hunter, Regional Refuge Biologist. "Enough credible evidence continues to come to our attention that leads the Service to believe several isolated pairs or very small populations may still exist."Update 2--I just checked again, and another "new" paragraph seems to have appeared:
The Nature Conservancy is another key player in the ivory-bill search and in the effort to preserve bottomland forest habitat. Allan Mueller, avian conservation project manager for The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas, says, "The 2006-07 search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas was another season of easy cooperation between the members of the Big Woods Conservation Partnership. While we did not come up with the 'iron-clad' evidence, we did discover new promising locations to search and again produced tantilizing evidence of this great bird's continuing presence."Update 3--A Birdforum poster provides some analysis here.
Mark, if you had to bet the farm on there being at least one living ivorybill still out there, how would you bet?Mark's reply was:
Yea or nay?
...I'd bet nay, though it would be a wager I'd hope to lose!Note this 1/11/07 excerpt from Mark's first post on "Feathered Ghosts":
On my first day I heard suggestive "double-knocks" deep in the forest, which may well have come from an Ivory-billed Woodpecker (henceforth known by its banding code "IBWO." I'm still on the fence as to whether the bird exists at all, though slowly coming around to believing that it does. I'm quite familiar with all of the other woodpeckers in these forests, and have never heard anything quite like this.
- Rediscovery efforts for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, a species that was feared extinct for more than 60 years.
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