Campephilus p. principalis (Ivory-billed Woodpecker)

[another specialist]

anotherspecialist said:

Not so extinct woodpecker may provide tourist boom
Impoverished Arkansas Delta towns hope 'Lord God' bird will work an economic miracle
Thursday, May 05, 2005

By Melissa Nelson, The Associated Press


Science via AP
An artist's rendering of female (top) and male ivory-billed woodpeckers. Long thought to be extinct, Cornell University researcher John W. Fitzpatrick recently reported in the magazine Science that there have been several independent sightings of the birds in the "Big Woods" region of eastern Arkansas.

COTTON PLANT, Arkansas -- If the ivory-billed woodpecker was magic to early-day American Indians, perhaps it can work some magic for the modern-day residents trying to scratch out a living in this poor Delta region.


The striking bird -- not extinct after all -- has already attracted eager birdwatchers to the dying communities that dot the area. Rooms at a nearby Days Inn are filling up for fall -- prime season for birders.


"I wish I had a place to get T-shirts made up with the woodpecker on them that say Cotton Plant," said Ester Hicks, who runs Nannie's Kitchen cafe.


Ornithologists announced last week that an ivory-billed woodpecker, believed extinct since 1944, was living in a swamp in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. Arkansas' prime bird-watching season ended when the trees leafed out last month, but wildlife officials still have noticed more traffic.


Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that the woodpecker's discovery will be "a huge benefit to tourism. Look for a lot of folks to be coming to Arkansas and maybe spending their good old money."


David Goad, deputy director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, predicted the bird, considered the Holy Grail of birdwatchers, will bring thousands of visitors. "This will mean millions of dollars for this part of the world," he said.



Mike Wintroath, Associated Press
Douglas Zollner, from the Nature Conservancy, looks for signs of the rediscovered Ivory-billed woodpecker at the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge near Dixie, Ark., from a boat piloted by Jeremy Whiley, a wildlife officer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The federal government has pledged $10 million (?7.72 million) for the preservation of the bird, described by some as a pileated woodpecker on steroids because of its nearly 3-foot (90-centimeter) wing span. Over the years it's had many nicknames, including the "Lord God" bird. It was sought by Indians for its bill, believed to have magical powers, and hunted for its feathers to adorn women's hats. Loss of habitat was its main threat, though.


Jim Huter, a retired forester from Tucson, Arizona, altered a cross-country trip so he and his wife could stop by the refuge with the slight hope of seeing the bird.


"It would be totally amazing," Huter said. "In the first place, I would hope I was able to recognize it. It sounds like people were just getting a fleeting glimpse. If I saw one and recognized it, it would just blow me away."


Until a kayaker from Hot Springs spotted the woodpecker in February 2004, the last known sighting was in 1944 in northern Louisiana. During that time, the communities near the Cache River also faded.



Mike Wintroath, Associated Press
Curtis Stovall, left, and Lewis George are no longer permitted to fish their favorites areas in the bayou near Cotton Plant, Ark., because of the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed woodpecker.


"If you look up and down this street, we don't have any stores," said Doris Wright, standing outside the Cotton Plant post office and surveying the length of boarded-up, vine-covered structures that line Main Street. "We know what a hard place the Delta is."


Cotton Plant is in Woodruff County, one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the country. The town has lost nearly half its population since 1950 -- down to 960 -- and one out of every four people in Woodruff County lives below the poverty level.


Before the trains stopped running 40 to 50 years ago, Cotton Plant boomed with a population of 1,838 and, "you couldn't find a place to park on a Friday or Saturday night," said Hicks, relaxing in a booth at Nannie's Kitchen, where frog legs is the advertised special.


Wright and others hope someone will consider opening a new store and perhaps a bed-and-breakfast catering to birders. The town is relatively easy to reach, just 10 miles off Interstate 40, between Little Rock and Memphis, Tennessee.


"Instead of us always being put down as a poverty-stricken place, this is something that picks us up," Hicks said.


Hicks says locals dream of new jobs, but also fear environmental rules might curtail fishing and duck-hunting that currently drive much of the local economy.

Since the announcement, game and fish officials closed 5,000 acres of popular hunting and fishing areas within the Cache wildlife refuge for the bird's protection.


"I'm sure there are some commercial fishermen and some subsistence fishermen, who fish to feed their families, living there," said Keith Stephens, spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. "It's a Catch-22. You want to have an area where people can go and research, but it will restrict some fishing and hunting."


Stephens said 55,000 acres of the refuge remain open offering plenty of other fishing holes and hunting spots.


Lewis George and Curtis Stovall, who have fished the area's waterways for years, said they have been told they can no longer fish where they like. As the two men and a third friend showed off a large catch one recent afternoon, George lamented: "They stopped us from fishing in the bayou."

www.post-gazette.com/pg/05125/499301.stm

[another specialist]

sebbe67 said:

26-08-2005

The recent rediscovery of one of the world’s most enigmatic birds appears to stand up to scientific scrutiny after additional, vital acoustic evidence was presented by the ornithologists who made the sightings.

In April 2005, a team of scientists led by John Fitzpatrick from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology announced in the journal Science that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis had been sensationally rediscovered in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, Arkansas, USA. A crucial piece of evidence was a blurry video-tape of a woodpecker flying away from the camera.

Some ornithologists had questioned their interpretation of this video, saying it was inconclusive. However, the subsequent release of tape recordings made in Arkansas of the characteristic nasal “kent” calls of the species plus two double-knocks on a tree, interpreted as being made by Ivory-billed Woodpeckers has satisfied most sceptics of the species' continuing existence.

Over 18,000 hours of sounds were recorded on autonomous recording units (ARUs) designed by the Cornell Lab and strapped to trees in the swamp. More than 150 sites were monitored in the half-million acre Big Woods of Arkansas and these have now been analysed by researchers. Most striking is a recording from 24 January 2005 which captures a distant double knock, followed by a similar and much closer double rap 3.5 seconds later – possibly the drumming displays of two Ivory-bills communicating with one another by rapping on trees.

"I immediately felt a thrill of excitement the first time I heard that recording. It is the best tangible evidence so far that there could be more than one ivory-bill in the area." —Russell Charif, Bioacoustics Researcher, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

After eliminating thousands of noises from gunshots and other sources, the researchers found about 100 double knocks that bear a strong resemblance to the display drumming of the ivory-bill's closest relatives. The sounds were clustered around certain recording locations at certain times of day – a pattern that would not be expected if they had been produced by random noises.

Then ARUs also recorded nasal tooting calls similar to those of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. However, Blue Jays Cyanocitta cristata are notorious vocal mimics that sometimes utter calls like those of ivory-bills. However, a sophisticated acoustic classification program categorised nearly all of the unknown calls from Arkansas as most similar to Ivory-billed Woodpecker recordings. None matched up with "tooting" calls of Blue Jays from the Cornell's audio collection, but researchers say they cannot rule out the jays until they analyze more variants of the calls.

"These sounds give us additional hope that a few Ivory-billed Woodpeckers do live in the White River and Cache River region. But this species is still on the verge of extinction and huge mysteries remain to be solved. Certainly, we have a lot more work to do before we know enough to determine its population size, let alone ensure its survival." —John Fitzpatrick, Director, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

A team led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and other partners including Audubon (BirdLife in the US) will renew search efforts in the Big Woods in November. Hopefully the lack of leaves on the trees should hopefully prove more fruitful for searching at that time of year.

The calls are available to listen to on the Cornell Lab's web site.

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Federal water projects risk rediscovered woodpecker

By Seth Borenstein

KNIGHT RIDDER


CLARENDON, Ark. - The home of the newly rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker has been protected for decades by the White River and its swampy forest.

Now, the U.S. government is set to drain 150 billion gallons of water a year from the White River and is contemplating dredging it deeper, two projects that some environmentalists and federal wildlife officials say could harm the woodpecker and damage its habitat in the Big Woods of Arkansas.

This threat -- from two Army Corps of Engineers projects -- comes as other parts of the federal government scramble to create a recovery plan for the woodpecker, which was long thought to be extinct, and try to add more land to its home.

"The biggest threat to the ivory-billed woodpecker is the unbridled arrogance of the Army Corps of Engineers," charged Arkansas Wildlife Federation President David Carruth, a Clarendon lawyer.

The Army Corps has just started work on a controversial $319 million project to siphon water from the White River to help Arkansas rice farmers, whose demand for water has nearly drained the local aquifers. They say they need the water to stay afloat financially.

On Tuesday, the Army Corps sent a biological assessment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is in charge of the two wildlife refuges where the bird lives and is coordinating efforts to ensure its recovery, that said the irrigation project would "unlikely adversely affect the ivory-billed woodpecker."

The reasoning, according to the nine-page report, is that earlier studies found that the water diversion wouldn't hurt bottomland hardwoods and wetlands. "It is reasonable to assume that these withdrawals would not have negative effects on the ivory-billed woodpecker."

The corps would clear 135 acres of forestland and replant trees in 60 acres. The entire Big Woods area comprises more than half a million acres of forest.

Some other federal officials think more study is required.

"I think it needs further evaluation," Larry Mallard, the manager of the White River National Wildlife Refuge, said Wednesday.

He cited a split among local farmers on whether they want the project, and the community's long-standing distrust of the Army Corps.

After the irrigation project, there's an Army Corps plan on the "back burner" to dig a deeper navigational channel through the river to allow more barge traffic. Environmentalists and Mallard say that project, while more unlikely, would be "more egregious."

It isn't just the ivory-billed woodpecker that lives here among thick patches of 1,000-year-old trees.

This area, sometimes referred to as the "Amazon of North America," is home to 245 bird species, seven of them on the endangered list.

But environmental advocates say they hope to use the woodpecker to stop the Army Corps, just as other endangered species, such as the snail darter, have stopped massive and popular projects.

Earlier this month, the Army Corps beat the wildlife federation in court over a lawsuit filed before the woodpecker entered the picture, essentially winning the right to go ahead with the irrigation project.

"Protection to the ivory-billed is important to the corps," said Jim Bodron, the acting assistant chief of project management at the Army Corps' Memphis regional office. "We're not doing anything that could be potentially harmful until we do all the proper coordination."

Rice farmers and irrigation-project leaders around Stuttgart, Ark., said they weren't asking for much, just about 1.8 percent of the White River's water. And they won't use the water when levels are unusually low.

"We're not doing anything to the wetlands," said farmer Dan Hooks of Slovak, a member of the White River Irrigation Board, which will operate the system once it's built. "If we're not going to hurt the tree, we're not going to hurt the woodpecker."

Rodney Williams, a University of Arkansas civil engineering professor, said the irrigation project shouldn't harm the woodpecker habitat if it's managed properly.

"I see the concerns from the environmental advocates' standpoint, but I don't think they're going to suck the river dry for agricultural purposes just because they can," Williams said. "Nobody would stand it."

The now-stalled navigation project would dredge a 9-foot-deep channel in the lower White River and build riverbank jetties, which would deepen the channel further by pushing sediments away from the river's center using its currents.

The worries about the White River overshadow a positive change in the woodpecker's habitat.

Over the past 20 years, a state, federal and a private partnership with The Nature Conservancy has expanded the off-limits area of the Big Woods, making a larger area for the bird to roost and fly in, said Scott Simon, the Arkansas director of the conservancy.

"Twenty people working together have conserved 120,000 acres over the last 20 years," Simon said. But, he added, an additional 210,000 acres are needed.

[another specialist]

sebbe67 said:

this is just another bad example how little people care for the nature in the USA, its allabout money for them. I mean now when the bird has been found they should put all there efforts to protect this area and try to locate even more birds, not destroying the perhaps only place were this extremly bird lives,

[another specialist]

melanie said:

I agree. I think in Arkansas is now a similar case like in Cuba. The habitat is extremely vulnerable and any disturbance could led to a new extinction.

[another specialist]

anotherspecialist said:

www.songbird.org/birds/extinct/pics/ivorybill.jpg

[another specialist]

anotherspecialist said:

faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/jkopachena/extinct.html

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Ivory-billed woodpecker under scrutiny
Rex Dalton

Rediscovered species may not be out of the woods.

The ivory-billed woodpecker and the pileated variety look very similar. For a full comparison, click here.


A team of bird experts is questioning the reported discovery of an ivory-billed woodpecker, a species that until recently was thought to be extinct.

Conservationists and bird lovers were thrilled in April by a videotape, reported in Science1, of what seemed to be an ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in Arkansas.

No sighting of the majestic species in the United States had been confirmed since 1944; it disappeared as its dense forest habitat was chopped down, making the bird a symbol of lost heritage.

Now a team of ornithologists, led by Richard Prum of Yale University, Connecticut, plans to report a case of what it thinks is mistaken identity. The bird described in Science, the experts say, is not an ivory-billed woodpecker after all, but a non-endangered relative: a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus).

Questions asked

Prum's team includes a leading authority on ivory-billed woodpeckers, Jerome Jackson of Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, who for decades has been unable to document a sighting. "I have serious questions about the Science report," he told Nature in May, before the team began working on its own manuscript.

Prum and his colleagues scrutinized a video taken by a Cornell University team in the forested swamps east of Little Rock, Arkansas. Detailed studies of the bird's size and white markings suggest it could be a pileated woodpecker rather than an ivory-billed, they say. The Cornell team had considered this possibility and discounted it.

The crucial video includes a four-second section in which the bird takes off from a tupelo tree in April 2004. Because the camera was mounted on the front of a canoe, and set to a wide focus, the images are frustratingly blurry.

No comment

Prum declines to discuss details of his manuscript until it is published, in a PLoS journal. The third author of the paper is Mark Robbins, an ornithologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and member of the American Birding Association's checklist committee, which confirms species sightings.

John Fitzpatrick, the Cornell ornithologist who led the Science report, and other co-authors also declined to comment. PLoS plans to publish a response from the Cornell team, and a further rebuttal from Prum's group. All three papers are expected to go online within a month.

The Science paper also included seven reported sightings by Cornell team members between February 2004 and February 2005 around the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges. But visual observations can be suspect, and they came amid thousands of observer hours when no other sightings were made.

Watch the birdie

Prum's analysis may have significant implications for policy as well as conservation biology. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans are leading a charge to reduce species protections under the US Endangered Species Act.

For more than 30 years this legislation has sheltered threatened plants and animals, and infuriated some business and development interests. The ivory-billed woodpecker is covered under the act.

In April, after the woodpecker's reported rediscovery, the US departments of agriculture and the interior redirected about $10 million from other projects to conserve the ivory-billed's habitat. The announcement also triggered a tourist boom for rural Arkansas, with birding enthusiasts flocking to the area for a glimpse of the creature.

www.nature.com

[another specialist]

admin said:

From www.enn.com/today.html?id=8306:

Expert Questions Existence of Woodpecker

July 22, 2005 — By Caryn Rousseau, Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An expert on the ivory-billed woodpecker is questioning evidence that purportedly shows the rare bird, once thought to be extinct, in the swamps of southeast Arkansas.

Jerome A. Jackson, a zoologist at Florida Gulf Coast University, is challenging a blurry video cited by other scientists as showing a clip of one bird, saying the four-second image does "no more than suggest the possibility" that the bird still exists.

"I am certainly not saying that ivory-billed woodpeckers are not out there," Jackson said Thursday in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "I truly hope that the birds do exist in Arkansas."

Researchers at Cornell University announced in April that they had spotted the woodpecker, previously thought to have died out after flourishing in the forests of the southeastern United States. The findings were first reported in the journal Science.

Cornell researchers pointed to several independent sightings of the bird and the video clip, which, they said, showed key features of the woodpecker, including its distinctive wing markings.

Jackson, who wrote the book "In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker," published in 2004, wrote a paper with two other biologists questioning the bird's discovery, but he would not identify the journal or discuss details of the manuscript until the research is published.

Ginger Pinholster, a spokeswoman for Science, said she has heard nothing about plans to publish Jackson's research or an expected rebuttal by the team that announced the discovery.

Connie Bruce, a spokeswoman for Cornell's ivory-billed woodpecker project, said challenges from other biologists are a natural part of science.

"We would have been disappointed if there was no close scrutiny by the scientific community," Bruce said Thursday in a telephone interview. "This is not surprising at all that we have controversy. It's the process. It should definitely be going through this."

The Nature Conservancy, also part of the group that announced the woodpecker's discovery, stands behind its findings, spokesman Jay Harrod said.

"One of the reasons that we kept this story a secret for so long was because we didn't want to present it until the analysis of the video had been completed," Harrod said.

Since the woodpecker's discovery, federal agencies have promised millions to help preserve the bird's eastern Arkansas habitat in and around the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge.

Source: Associated Press

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Scientists present audio of ivory-billed woodpecker to public

Associated Press


SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Scientists publicly presented recordings Wednesday purportedly by the ivory-billed woodpecker - once thought to be extinct until a bird expert spotted it in the swamps of southeast Arkansas last year.

The woodpecker sighting sparked controversy earlier this year after researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology published a paper that contained a grainy video clip of the striking bird - with its 3-foot wingspan and distinctive black-and-white markings - reportedly rediscovered in the Big Woods area of Arkansas.

Critics immediately challenged the bird's existence, saying the blurry videotape of a bird in flight wasn't enough evidence. Many skeptics were won over after the Cornell researchers sent doubters several recordings of sounds that suggested the bird's existence.

Wednesday marked the first time the audio was publicly played during the American Ornithologists' Union meeting in Santa Barbara.

The Cornell ornithologists made 18,000 hours of recordings, using equipment set out in various woods and swamplands near the Cache and White rivers in Arkansas last winter.

Scientists said the sounds were similar to ivory bills. One recording featured a series of distinctive nasally sounds that ivory bills make and another captured an exchange of double-rap sounds, which may indicate two ivory bills communicating with each other.

"It is the best tangible evidence so far that there could be more than one ivory-bill in the area," Russell Charif, a researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in a statement.

The ivory bill, last seen in 1944, is one of six North American bird species thought to have become extinct since 1880. The bird was prevalent across the southeastern United States at one time.

Since the woodpecker's rediscovery, federal agencies have promised millions to help preserve the bird's eastern Arkansas habitat in and around the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge.

John Fitzpatrick, lab director, said the ornithologists played their recordings of the ivory bill woodpecker and then played recording of related species of woodpeckers in South and Central America for comparison.

He said reaction from conference attendees seemed positive.

---__

On the Net:

American Ornithologists' Union: www.aou.org

Woodpecker audio: www.birds.cornell.edu

[another specialist]

melanie said:

an interview with Tim Gallagher

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker: Fact or Fiction?

Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public service. Please donate now to preserve an independent environmental voice.


A remote bayou in eastern Arkansas entered the national spotlight last April after the ivory-billed woodpecker, believed extinct since the 1930's, was reportedly rediscovered there. The news brought new hope for birders, a wave of tourism, and $10 million in federal money for habitat conservation. But now, another group of scientists is disputing the evidence, saying the bird thought to be an ivory-billed could actually be the common pileated woodpecker. Guest host Jeff Young speaks with Tim Gallagher, who claims he saw the bird, as well as Dr. Jerry Jackson, a skeptic.

YOUNG: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts, this is Living on Earth. I'm Jeff Young, sitting in for Steve Curwood.

It's the feel-good wildlife story of the year: dedicated birders trekking through the swamps of Arkansas catch sight of a majestic bird long-thought extinct. Then, armed with video evidence, the birders make a dramatic announcement in April-- they had rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Or had they? Other scientists now say it could be a case of mistaken bird identity. Jerry Jackson of Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers is among the skeptics and he joins us now. Welcome.

JACKSON: It's good to be here, thank you.

YOUNG: Why do you doubt this evidence that was presented?

JACKSON: Well, science moves forward on the strength of the evidence that's presented and on the ability of other scientists to verify that evidence. The evidence that has been presented so far includes visual observations, that for which we have no documentation, and, in addition, a very brief video that is sub-optimal – admittedly sub-optimal even by those who wrote the paper in Science.

YOUNG: Okay, sub-optimal? Sounds like a delicate way of putting it. You don't think that's the bird, do you?

JACKSON: We don't know whether it's the bird or not. But we look at it as those authors have provided us with tremendous hope. And the world has reacted to the hope that they have provided. But hope is not truth – it's only the fire that incites us to seek the truth, and the truth is still out there.

YOUNG: What do you think is in that video there?

JACKSON: Well, we have analyzed the video frame by frame and looked at the obvious potential, and that is that it's a pileated woodpecker, and we believe the video shows a pileated woodpecker that is flying away. The pileated, incidentally, is a very common bird in bottomland forests across the southeast, and in old growth forests, and even in some suburban areas across North America. We're not questioning what those people thought they saw, but we can't know what they actually saw without some kind of proof.

YOUNG: Dr. Jerry Jackson teaches at the Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers, Florida. Thank you for being with us, Dr. Jackson.

JACKSON: Thank you, I've enjoyed it.

YOUNG: So, is the ivory-billed really back or was this just some wishful woodpecker thinking? Well, Tim Gallagher says it's the real thing. He says he saw the bird in that Arkansas swamp and he joins us now from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Mr. Gallagher, welcome to Living on Earth.

GALLAGHER: Thank you, glad to be here.

YOUNG: Mr. Gallagher, you have a book just out that documents your search for the ivory-billed. It's called "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker." And it became the story of your sighting of the bird, but I guess it started out a little differently. You had this project to talk to other people who claimed that they had seen this bird in past years.

GALLAGHER: Yeah, I mean, some of these people had seen them years ago and everyone knew they'd seen them. It was in the famous Singer Tract of northeast Louisiana, and it was the last known stronghold of the ivory billed woodpecker. And I spoke with people who'd seen the birds in the 1930s and 40s, including some kids who grew up near there. And also Nancy Tanner, who was the widow of James Tanner, who was the Cornell grad student in the late 1930s who studied the birds there.

But I started also interviewing people who'd seen them more recently. Sometimes it was thirty or forty years ago. And I started visiting these people and interviewing them face to face about their sightings. And if they sounded credible I would go out there and check them out.

YOUNG: In the course of checking out one of these accounts this is what led you to this swamp with this great name, the Bayou de View. And quite a view it had, huh? What happened there?

GALLAGHER: Well, we'd spend the night out the night before, and we were going to float the entire length of this bayou looking for the bird. And we didn't necessarily expect to see a bird, we just wanted to evaluate the habitat and see if this was worth spending any more time there. And on the second day out, about 1:15 in the afternoon, Bobby Harrison and I were canoeing down the bayou there and all of a sudden we spotted this bird coming up a side slew. And it just merged in front of us. We measured later, it was only 68 feet away, and it flew across the bayou right in front of us in good light and it was swinging up like it was going to land on this tree. And we both yelled "Ivory-Bill!" simultaneously, and probably spooked it, to be honest, cause it veered away from the tree and it flew further into the woods. We got over the side and jumped out of the canoe, sunk to our knees right away, and just were scrambling through there as fast as we could go, pulling ourselves over logs and through branches. And finally, after about 15 minutes of that, we sat down on a log and Bobby just let out a sigh and said, "I saw an ivory-bill," and he started sobbing.

YOUNG: And you had some trepidation, I guess, about sharing with these scientists what you had seen.

GALLAGHER: Well, that's right. For more than half a century, ivory-bill sightings have been looked at in the same way as a Sasquatch sighting, or Loch-Ness monster,. And people had been, other ornithologists had been laughed at in the past over the years. So it was quite a step. I hadn't slept for a couple days just worrying about announcing this to the Lab of Ornithology that I'd seen this bird.

YOUNG: These expert birders and scientists, they joined you down there, you spent a – long story short – a lot of time in some thick mucky swamps. Several people claimed they saw the bird. You got a clip of video and published in Science magazine the results here. What do you make of this challenge to your evidence?

GALLAGHER: Well, I look at it like this is the scientific process: you publish a paper, and people give you their response and you from there. I mean, we welcome this kind of inquiry, and I'm absolutely certain that our results will be borne out, that we did, indeed, see an ivory-billed woodpecker out there.

YOUNG: Now, you are clearly a very passionate chaser of this bird. You believed very strongly that it was out there, and then you found it out there. Some might take this in and say, 'maybe he believed it was out there so much that he saw it when it wasn't there.' Did your emotion taint your ability to be objective about what you were seeing?

GALLAGHER: Well, no it didn't. I've always been an objective observer. As a bird watcher I tend to be conservative. I'm not the person who's going out there and saying I found this fabulous bird over here – because I want to be sure. I want to be absolutely sure. When I saw that bird, I looked at the white going to the trailing edge of its wings, I honed in on that, I watched it fly for about another ten feet and I double-checked that again. There was no way that it could have been anything but an ivory-billed woodpecker. I mean, I know the birds in North America. This was a bird I'd never seen.



Female Ivory-billed Woodpecker at nest hole. (Photo: James T. Tanner, 1937)


YOUNG: If this bird has been out there and this is, as you put it, the "Holy Grail" for birders, why have other birders not seen it?

GALLAGHER: Well, actually, people ask me that a lot. They say, well, considering how many thousands of birdwatchers there are in the United States, surely if these birds still existed some people would be seeing them. But the problem is birdwatchers don't go out to these places. When birdwatchers go to the swamp, 99 percent of them go about 100 feet out on the boardwalk. They don't get down and dirty in the swamp. And they don't spend a lot of time dressed in camouflage sitting still. It's been people like hunters and fishermen who've been coming back with interesting reports. These are the people who've been ignored. So, it's not surprising to me at all that this bird, considering how low its population must be, it's not surprising that it could've gotten by under the radar screen for so long.

YOUNG: Clearly, your hope is that the rediscovery of the bird will trigger more action to protect what's left of this sort of habitat. And you – or at least my interpretation of what you're writing here is – that you're a little miffed with the scientific establishment for not being more open to the possibility that the bird might be out there and that we should get about saving some of these woods.

I want to read an excerpt from the book. You write that "the belief that this bird is extinct has been held so strongly for so long that it has become a tenet adhered to by many ornithologists as rigidly and dogmatically as the tenets of the most fundamentalist religious sects." I'm wondering, isn't that a little harsh? I mean, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, don't they?

GALLAGHER: Yeah, that's right, but on the other hand, I've met scientists who said that they had heard of credible reports of sightings of ivory-bills, and they didn't investigate them because they didn't want to have it reflect badly on their careers. So, when it reaches the point where it has that kind of chilling effect on the science, then there's a problem.

YOUNG: Now, as I understand, part of your argument in the book here is that there was more at stake in disputes like that than just the egos of the people or scientists involved. Your point is, what happens to the bird, or what did happen to the bird, if it was out there, people were seeing it, and those claims were disregarded, and there was no additional protection or action toward the bird?

GALLAGHER: That's right. I mean, that's really what we have to worry about here, too. We don't want our conservation efforts to get stalled. This was a very neglected habitat. I mean, it's one of the great ecological tragedies of the United States that all the southern bottomland swamp forests were not protected. They were cut for decade after decade, from the Civil War to the mid-twentieth century, until there was really nothing left.

This area where we've had the sightings really might just be a place the birds fly through – it's a narrow area of swamp only about a mile wide. There's a really huge wooded area to the south of there, and there's a huge swamp to the north, and this might just be a passageway where the birds aren't really spending a lot of time.

YOUNG: Hmm. So, a lot more hunting to do?

GALLAGHER: A lot more. Yeah, we've only looked at something like eight percent of the forests there. There's half a million acres, and so it's a huge, very daunting task.

YOUNG: It sounds like your life is going to be very busy.

GALLAGHER: Mm-hmm.

YOUNG: And is this giving away too much, or do you have fresh evidence coming?

GALLAGHER: You know, I don't know if I should talk about it before it's published – actually, at the American Ornithologist Union meeting in Santa Barbara next month, we'll have some evidence. We'll present our acoustic evidence.

YOUNG: Well, I'm sure a lot of people will be listening.

GALLAGHER: Yep. (LAUGHS)

YOUNG: Tim Gallagher is author of "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory- Billed Woodpecker," it's published by Houghton-Mifflin. He is also editor of Living Bird magazine. Mr. Gallagher, thank you for talking with us.

GALLAGHER: Thank you, it was my pleasure.

[MUSIC: JoRane "Pour Gabrielle" from 'You & Now' (2005)]

YOUNG: There's more about Gallagher's account of the ivory-billed woodpecker at the Cornell Ornithology Lab's website. The scientists challenging the evidence will publish their paper in an upcoming issue of the online journal Public Library of Science Biology. And you can link to both websites via ours at Living on Earth dot org. That's Living on Earth dot o-r-g.

YOUNG: Coming up: Judging Judge Roberts on the Environment. Keep listening to Living on Earth.

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Scientist says woodpecker find doesn't fly
Researchers stand by bird sighting in eastern Arkansas


12:08 AM CDT on Friday, July 22, 2005


By SUZI PARKER / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The news that three scientists are questioning whether the ivory-billed woodpecker, once thought to be extinct, is actually in Arkansas doesn't surprise the researchers who say they saw it or worry those who expect to make money off it.

"This is part of the scientific process: You publish a paper and people respond," said Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine.

"The recovery teams spent a lot of time down here [looking for the woodpecker], and we are going to go by faith and have confidence that it is here," said Brinkley Mayor Billy Clay, whose town is five miles from where Cornell researchers and others say they saw the bird.

Mr. Clay said Brinkley is still geared up for bird watchers expected this fall: "More people will probably want to come see if they can find the bird now."

The scientists said evidence used to back the claim that the woodpecker was found in Arkansas is not strong enough. Their paper has been provisionally accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

"The data presented thus far do no more than suggest the possibility of the presence of an ivory-billed woodpecker," said Jerome A. Jackson, a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, on Thursday.

Neither he nor the other two scientists – ornithologists Richard O. Prum of Yale and Mark B. Robbins of the University of Kansas – would give details of their paper, which is embargoed until publication.

In April, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Nature Conservancy announced the rediscovery of the woodpecker known for its white markings and red crest.

After the announcement, Arkansans became obsessed with the woodpecker. The rediscovery meant a boon in the depressed Arkansas Delta. Bird watchers crowded into Brinkley, a town of 4,000. Hunting guides decided to become woodpecker experts.

Businesses sold woodpecker T-shirts, and people got woodpecker haircuts. Some politicians even wanted to change the state bird from the mockingbird to the ivory-billed woodpecker.

The U.S. Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture proposed spending more than $10 million to supplement $10 million already committed to research and habitat protection by private groups and individuals. The Interior Department said the questions raised by Dr. Jackson and others would not jeopardize that funding.

In Brinkley, too, nothing changed. "We are going forward," said Chamber of Commerce director Sandra Kemmer. "People in the scientific community are always disputing the findings."

Suzi Parker is a freelance writer based in Little Rock.

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Vindication for Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and Its Fans
By JAMES GORMAN and ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: August 2, 2005, New York Times
The phoenix had nothing on the ivory-billed woodpecker.

It is hard to keep track of how many times this near-mythic bird, the largest American woodpecker and a poignant symbol of extinction and disappearing forests, has been lost and then found. Now it is found again.

Even the most skeptical ornithologists now agree. They say newly presented recordings show that at least two of the birds are living in Arkansas.

Richard O. Prum, an ornithologist at Yale University and one of several scientists who had challenged the most recently claimed rediscovery of the ivory bill, said Monday after listening to the tape recordings that he was now "strongly convinced that there is at least a pair of ivory bills out there."

Mark B. Robbins, an ornithologist at the University of Kansas, who had also been a skeptic, listened to the same recordings with a graduate student and said, "We were absolutely stunned."

Dr. Robbins said the recordings, provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, were "astounding." Of a paper questioning claims of the woodpecker's discovery that he, Dr. Prum and another scientist had submitted to the Public Library of Science, he said, "It's all moot at this point; the bird's here."

That was what the Cornell lab said last April, when it announced that an ivory bill had been sighted in February 2004 in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. In April 2005, a group of scientists published a paper in the journal Science on the rediscovery, with a heavily analyzed but blurry video.

After widespread euphoria, three skeptics - Dr. Prum, Dr. Robbins and Jerome A. Jackson, a zoologist at Florida Gulf Coast University - prepared their criticism. Prominent birders like David Allen Sibley and Kenn Kaufman agreed that the evidence in the Science paper was not conclusive.

But while the skeptics' paper was still in the works, the Cornell team provided several audio recordings to Dr. Prum and Dr. Robbins. Dr. Jackson, who was out of the country, has not had a chance to listen to them, Dr. Prum said. The evidence was so convincing - the characteristic nasal "kent" call and double raps on a tree - that Dr. Prum and Dr. Robbins withdrew their challenge.

"The thrilling new sound recordings provide clear and convincing evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct," Dr. Prum said in a statement.

The snippet of videotape that until now was the strongest individual piece of evidence showed only one bird. But the sound recordings, made over many months in the White River National Wildlife Refuge, just south of Cache River, provide vital signs that a potential breeding population persists, said experts and officials involved with the search.

"We felt all along that the White River was probably the core of the bird's habitat and it was dispersing out," said Sam Hamilton, the Southeast regional director for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and chairman of a panel overseeing the drafting of a recovery plan for the bird.

The scientific consensus on the strength of the sound recordings from that region was "very, very exciting," Mr. Hamilton said. "It gives you chill bumps to think about that vast bottomland hardwood being certainly home to more than one bird."

Dr. Prum said the double raps appeared to be from a pair of ivory bills communicating with each other, one close and one far away. "I'm thinking about when I should head down to Arkansas," he said.

John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a primary author of the Science paper that announced the bird's survival, said, "The birds are there, which we knew." But Dr. Fitzpatrick said he was happy that a scientific battle in print had been avoided.

"We sent them the sounds," he said. "I wish we'd done that earlier." But he noted that the process was "science in action, at its messy best."

The manager of the 160,000-acre White River refuge, Larry E. Mallard, said the boggy woodlands there had been actively logged for generations in a way that took care to protect areas friendly to wildlife. As a result, Mr. Mallard said, one rare species after another has returned, including bald eagles and swallow-tailed kites.

The ivory bill topped it all, he said.

"Now Elvis has come along," he said, "and said: 'I'm the rock star. Look at me.' "

__

There is another interesting question. Barely that a project is planned, which could have negative effects of the habitat where the IBW is supposed, people came, and say that is was not the IBW, which was discovered but the Pileated woodpecker, which is rather common. These critics have made me thoughtful. What do they want and do they have connections to the politicians who make the decisions pro or contra the project? At the end it will depend all on the politicians that the IBW will survive in its habitat. I'm afraid that they will be negative affected by the people who say that there is no IBW. And if they decide against the IBW the last known habitat will be lost.

Here is the thread about the project

extinctanimals.proboards22.com/index.cgi?board=generalra&action=display&thread=1117284600

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Recordings convince woodpecker doubters
August 3, 2005


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Recordings of the ivory-billed woodpecker's distinctive double-rap sounds have convinced doubting researchers that the large bird once thought extinct is still living in an east Arkansas swamp.
Last month, a group of ornithologists had questioned the announcement made in April of the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, last sighted in 1944. They said blurry videotape of a bird in flight wasn't enough evidence. So a Cornell University researcher who was part of the team that announced the bird's rediscovery says his group sent the doubters more evidence.
"We sent them some sounds this summer from the Arkansas woods," said John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell ornithology lab. "We appreciate their ability to say they are now believers."
The doubters had prepared an article for a scientific journal questioning whether the bird really had been found. They now plan to withdraw the article, according to one of the doubters, ornithologist Richard Prum of Yale University.
Mr. Prum said yesterday he was particularly convinced by the Cornell researchers' two recordings of a series of nasally sounds that the ivory bills make and an exchange of double-rap sounds between two birds. He said the sounds matched recordings made in the 1930s in Louisiana.
"It's really on the basis of the new evidence that we've become convinced that the ivory-billed woodpecker exists," Mr. Prum said.
The recordings seem to indicate that there is more than one ivory-billed woodpecker in the area.
"The bird that we saw had to have a mommy and a daddy," said Scott Simon, director of the Nature Conservancy in Arkansas. "We have solid evidence for one. We believe there are more."
Ornithologists announced in late April that an ivory-billed woodpecker was living in a swamp in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Arkansas. A Hot Springs kayaker had seen the bird a year earlier.
But Mr. Prum and fellow ornithologists at Kansas and Florida Gulf Coast universities last month questioned the evidence, saying it was only strong enough to suggest the possibility that the bird was present, not proof.
Yesterday, another one of those experts became a believer.
"We were astounded. Yes, I totally believe, thank goodness, there are ivory bills," said Mark Robbins of the University of Kansas. "We are ecstatic. Once everybody hears these vocalizations, you can't help but be convinced."

The Cornell ornithologists made 17,000 hours of recordings, using equipment set out in various places near the Cache and White rivers in Arkansas last winter.
One portion of the tapes has a distant double-rap, followed closely by a double-rap that is very close.
"It's communication typical of the ivory-billed. It's one of the more exciting cuts from the tape," Mr. Fitzpatrick said.
When the ornithologists announced in April that the bird had been found, the audio had not been reviewed closely enough, Mr. Fitzpatrick said. "We thought it was premature in April to publish the analyses."
The Cornell researchers plan to release the audio publicly Aug. 23 at the American Ornithologists' Union in Santa Barbara, Calif.

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Reported Ivory-bill Sightings Since 1944
by Matt Mendenhall, map by Jay Smith



Exclusive Map
Ivory-billed Woodpeckers were last confirmed in 1944 in Louisiana and in 1986 in Cuba. Possible sightings by ornithologists, birders, and others in the years since are plotted above and describe in more detail below. Shades of green on the map show the Ivory-bill's declining range.


1. Highway 29, Collier Co., Fla., about 1950
Observer: Ornithologist Allan Cruickshank, father of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Notable: Today Highway 29 is the western boundary of Big Cypress National Preserve.

2. Chipola River, Calhoun Co., Fla., 1950-52
Observers: Whitney Eastman, vice president of General Mills, Muriel Kelso, Davis Crompton, and John Dennis. Notable: Crompton and Dennis had found Ivory-bills in Cuba in 1948 that Dennis photographed. In the Chipola River Swamp, conservationists, land owners, and government officials established a wildlife sanctuary, but after no additional sightings were reported, sanctuary status was discontinued in 1952.

3. South of Tallahassee, Wakulla Co., Florida, July 1952
Observer: Samuel A. Grimes, discoverer (in 1953) of the first known Cattle Egret nest in North America

4. Homosassa Springs, Florida, April 1955
Observer: John K. Terres, former Audubon Magazine editor and author of The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds. Notable: For fear of being scorned, Terres kept the sighting a secret for more than 30 years.

5. Altamaha River Basin, Georgia, 1958
Observer: Ornithologist and forest ecologist Herbert Stoddard, who devoted the final years of his life to a study of bird kills at a north Florida television tower. Notable: Stoddard reported seeing the bird from a distance of 50 yards while he was flying in a small plane.

6. Near Thomasville, Georgia, 1958
That same year, Stoddard also reported seeing a pair in beetle-killed spruce pine near Thomasville, Georgia.

7. West of Aucilla River, Jefferson Co., Florida, 1959
Observer: William Rhein

8. Neches River Swamp, Texas, 1966, 1968
Observers: Birder Olga Hooks Lloyd (April 1966), John Dennis (December 1966 and February 1968). Notable: Dennis claimed to have recorded the bird in 1968, but some questioned the recording's authenticity. Today, acoustics experts at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology say it is an Ivory-bill recording. In 1974, Congress set aside 84,500 acres of east Texas as the Big Thicket National Preserve, partly due to the reported sightings.

9. Near Elgin Air Force Base, Florida, 1966
Observers: Birders Bedford P. Brown Jr. and Jeffrey R. Sanders. Notable: The men heard and then saw a pair of Ivory-bills scaling beetle-killed pines for 16 minutes.

10. Green Swamp area, Polk Co., Florida, 1967
Observer: Ornithologist David S. Lee, curator emeritus of birds, North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences. Notable: After seeing a female Ivory-bill fly across a road 25 yards in front of him, Lee, who was then a student, returned to the swamp with his professor and discovered large slabs of bark removed from trees -- typical of Ivory-bill feeding activity.

11. Northwest of Lake Okeechobee, Polk Co., Florida, 1967-69
Observers: Ivory-bill hunters H. Norton Agey and George M. Heinzmann reported seeing or hearing a bird on 11 occasions between 1967 and 1969. Notable: A feather found near a tree cavity was identified as an Ivory-bill's innermost secondary.

12. Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana, 1971
Observer: Fielding Lewis, chairman of the Louisiana Boxing Commission. Notable: Lewis snapped two fuzzy photos of an Ivory-bill and sent the photos to Louisiana State University ornithologist George Lowery who showed them to fellow scientists at that year's American Ornithologists' Union meeting. The photos met with skepticism at the time, but today, prominent ornithologists accept them as legitimate. Birding Magazine published one of the photos in its December 2001 issue. Click here to download a PDF of the article.

13. Noxubee River, Mississippi and Alabama, March 1973
Observer: Ornithologist Jerome A. Jackson, author of In Search of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and a June 2002 Birder's World article, The Truth Is Out There.

14. Ogeechee River, 25 miles west of Savannah, Georgia, July 1973
Observers: Rev. C. Deming Gerow and his son, Jim. Notable: The Gerows, missionaries in Argentina, were bird banders and were familiar with Campephilus woodpeckers in South America.

15. Black Creek, DeSoto National Forest, Mississippi, 1978
Observers: Ornithologists Ronald Sauey, the late co-founder of the International Crane Foundation, and Charles Luthin, executive director of the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin. Notable: Sauey heard a bird that "sounded every bit like the historic Ivory-bill recording of Allen and Kellogg."

16. Pascagoula River, Mississippi, February 1982
Observer: Birder Mary Morris of Biloxi, Mississippi

17. Loxahatchee River in Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Florida, April 1985
Observer: Dennis G. Garratt. Notable: He watched the bird from 25 to 40 feet away for about 15 minutes.

18. Near Yazoo River, Mississippi, March 1987
Observers: Ivory-bill expert Jackson and then-graduate student Malcolm Hodges, currently the stewardship ecologist with the Nature Conservancy of Georgia Notable: A bird called in response to a tape the men played of an Ivory-bill call. It approached to within about 150 yards, then disappeared.

19. Ojito de Agua area, Cuba, March 1988
Observer: Jackson. Notable: He and other ornithologists were there to follow up on a confirmed sighting in the same area two years before. Ivory-bill call notes were heard on eight different days during the '88 expedition.

20. Pearl River Swamp, Louisiana, April 1999
Observer: Turkey hunter David Kulivan. Notable: An intensive search of the swamp by ornithologists in 2002 found no evidence of Ivory-bills.

21. Cache River, Arkansas, February 2004
Observer: Gene Sparling. Notable: Later that month, Sparling led Tim Gallagher of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and photography professor Bobby Harrison along the Cache, and Gallagher and Harrison saw an Ivory-bill. Their sighting sparked the search that confirmed the Ivory-bill's existence.

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Cornell sets up $800,000 hunt for elusive bird
Sunday, October 23, 2005
By Rebecca James
Staff writer
Biologists hired by Cornell University begin mobilizing Monday for another full-scale invasion of the Arkansas swamps that are home to the mythic ivory-billed woodpecker.

With a staff of 20, a core of volunteers and a fleet of high-tech equipment, they hope to get definitive proof that the largest woodpecker in North America is not extinct.

But the technical firepower and a host of experienced birders do not make this a sure bet. No one has officially spotted the bird since Valentine's Day.

"It's frustrating, because we are on a very cold trail right now," said Ken Rosenberg, the lab's director of conservation science.

The first search for the ivory-billed woodpecker was done in secret. It yielded 15 sightings of the bird, seven of which were 8 considered at close enough range and for a long enough time to be credible.

This summer, the Cornell ornithologists left the swamps to the cottonmouths and other creatures. Meanwhile, they battled researchers from other universities who - until the last minute - planned to submit a paper claiming Cornell's blurry four-second video, released in April, really showed a pileated woodpecker, not an ivory-bill.

The skeptics withdrew the paper and said they were convinced the ivory-bill existed, after the Cornell lab sent them audio recordings that captured the bird's calls and knocks.

Not everyone is convinced, and the debate continues on the Internet. One blogger, who identifies himself as an "avid Minnesota birder," maintains a Web site called "the ivory-bill skeptic" and contends the searchers probably spotted an abnormal version of the pileated woodpecker.

"I think the search team is so committed to their 'Ivory-bill' discovery that they can't be expected to do true objective, cold-hearted analysis of the evidence any longer," the anonymous skeptic said. "I think they've invested so much work and time into this project that expecting them to step back, take a fresh look and ask 'Could this really all be a mistake?' is asking way too much."

This year's search, funded by $800,000 in private donations, starts with mapping the most likely habitat: 120 miles of the White and Cache rivers along with nearby wetlands.

The search begins in the hot zone, a 20-kilometer radius from the area in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge where most of the sightings took place. The field staff will find every likely feeding tree or nesting hole and those will be plotted on the maps maintained by Ron Rohrbaugh, the search coordinator.

The paid staff will then fan out into a larger area while volunteers monitor the promising sites they identified.

Cornell's field staff heads down to Arkansas Monday to prepare for an Oct. 31 orientation for 19 full-time searchers. Training continues until the full-scale search starts Nov. 7, said Rohrbaugh, who will split his time between Ithaca and Arkansas.

The search season lasts until April 30. Not only are ivory-bills less active in the summer, dense leaf cover makes them harder to spot and low water levels make it impossible to canoe, the primary transportation mode through the swamps.

Unlike last year's search, which was similar in cost and size of the paid staff, this undertaking is not a secret. Last year's searchers had to sign confidentiality agreements. Advertising was out of the question, as was taking on volunteers.

This year, recruiting was out in the open for paid and volunteer slots. A cadre of more than 100 experienced volunteers has signed on for two-week stints. The volunteers will come in about six to eight at a time, beginning Dec. 4, after the paid staff has had a month to get their feet wet.

And wet feet are just the beginning. Sleuthing for clues to a rare bird's existence turns out to be tough on morale.

"The work itself, on a day-to-day basis, is quite tedious," Rosenberg said. "It seems exciting, but what you're doing is sitting on a log, swatting mosquitoes and trying to stay awake."

Organizers are taking some steps to make life less taxing for the field staff.

In the frenzy of last year's search, birders worked six days a week. This year it will be five. And instead of having to prepare their own meals from staples provided by the lab, cooks will prepare dinners several times a week.

"We're asking so much of them," Rohrbaugh said. "Most of them are so dedicated and they are out in the field, slogging around in the mud, getting wet. It is Arkansas, but it's cold in January and February."

As the searchers slog, they will turn on two-way radios that are also handheld, global positioning units. The units can display maps and track where the birder is moving through the forest.

Every evening, field staff will download the tracking information and, back in the war room, the tracks will be matched with aerial photographs to see exactly what was covered.

Meanwhile, audio and video units will also be deployed in the most promising spots to capture evidence of the bird.

About 30 audio devices will run continually, with the data sent back daily to Cornell for analysis. A staff of four will review the tapes with software that flags sounds that could be made by an ivory-bill. The analysis has to be done quickly so that field staff can respond to evidence that the bird is in the vicinity, Rohrbaugh said.

Four time-lapse video cameras will be aimed at feeding trees. They snap a picture every 20 seconds, speeding up to take a picture every second if a bird flies into the frame.

Last year, the lab used remote cameras designed for deer hunters, triggered by the motion and heat of a large mammal rather than a bird.

"We did a lot of trial and error last year in terms of equipment and strategy," Rosenberg said. "Everyone knows what works and what doesn't. We'll be hitting the ground running with a better system of technology."

Cornell ornithologists plan to continue searching for the bird no matter what the results, although funding may drop if there are not more sightings.

"What's going to happen if we go five years and never see the bird?" Rosenberg asked. "It could fade from the spotlight and become a chapter in the crazy history of the ivory-billed woodpecker."

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Cornell researchers say finding rare Arkansas woodpecker hard


November 2, 2005, 6:38 AM EST


BRINKLEY, Ark. -- As a team of searchers sets off into Arkansas' Big Woods with the hopes of recording another sighting of the rare ivory-billed woodpecker, experts say they have a daunting task ahead.

"The trail is fairly cold at this point," said Ken Rosenberg, an ornithologist from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., while speaking at a symposium of bird experts in Brinkley this week.
The last official time anyone saw the woodpecker was Feb. 14, 2005, two months before it was announced that the bird was rediscovered. The ivory-billed woodpecker had been extinct since the 1940s. There have been 18 sightings of the woodpecker by 16 different people.

There is a grainy video and several audio recordings of the woodpecker to go by, but when a team of searchers sets out into the Big Woods later this month they will have many questions left to answer about the elusive woodpecker.

Rosenberg said the key would be finding the woodpecker's roost or nesting hole. Other pivotal information is an accurate count of existing woodpeckers, if they are reproducing, what they're eating and their range of habitat, he said.

This month's search will focus on finding the bird's roosts and capturing a recording of its signature double rap, Rosenberg said.

[another specialist]

admin said:

Environmentalists Sue to Save Woodpecker

September 09, 2005 — By Annie Bergman, Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Environmentalists who fear a plan to divert water to eastern Arkansas farms will harm the habitat of the recently rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker filed a federal lawsuit Thursday.

The project would pump 100 billion gallons of water per year from the White River. The Arkansas Wildlife Federation and the National Wildlife Federation said diverting so much water will harm the swampy woods that are the ivory-billed woodpecker's habitat.

The groups on Thursday sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to halt work on the irrigation project.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker has a rare chance at recovery, but no one is listening," said David Carruth, president of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation. "Within weeks of sighting the bird and with ridiculously little scientific research, the construction on the project began."

Bob Anderson, spokesman for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Memphis Tenn., said their attorneys had not yet received the lawsuit.

"We believe that this project will not have a negative impact on the environment or on the bird's ecosystem," said Anderson, adding "we're all very interested in saving the bird."

Work started in June on a $34.5 million pumping station on the White River. The project is designed to make sure that farmers have water to irrigate their fields as their longtime water source -- an underground aquifer -- is slowly drying up.

The region is a major center for American rice production. Corps officials have said that, without the project, the amount of currently irrigated cropland would shrink by 77 percent, resulting in severe economic losses.

The federations, however, say the irrigation project would "at best degrade and at worst destroy" the east Arkansas habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which was rediscovered by a kayaker last year.

Ornithologists had thought the bird had been extinct since the 1940s and some challenged the rediscovery. Skeptics said blurry videotape of a bird in flight wasn't enough evidence, but many were won over after a team of Cornell University researchers released recordings of sounds that suggested the bird's existence.

Source: Associated Press
Link: www.enn.com/today.html?id=8745

[another specialist]

melanie said:

Search for Rare Arkansas Woodpecker Resumes

November 24, 2005 - By Caryn Rousseau, Associated Press

www.enn.com/today.html?id=9317

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Scientists and birders will resume their search this

winter for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker to prove, once and for
all,
that the bird really lives in the vast eastern Arkansas wetlands.

The bird, with its massive wingspan and signature double rap, was
thought to
have been extinct for decades when a kayaker reported finding one in
February 2004. In April, the interior secretary acknowledged the chance
sighting.

But the steamy Arkansas summer conditions halted the search for the
woodpecker.

"The birds are relatively silent," said Tim Gallagher of the Cornell Lab
of
Ornithology and member of the search team. "The woods, they're like a
jungle, just thick foliage, just incredibly hot, humid, buggy and snakes

everywhere. Everything about it is just as bad as could be."

Now that leaves are falling off the trees, creating a clearer view, and
the
snakes are at bay, search conditions are perfect for woodpecker
spotting,
Gallagher said.

"The birds tend to be more vocal and active because they're coming into
breeding season and it's much easier to see," Gallagher said.

A crew from Cornell and its partner agencies will train 100 volunteers
for
the six-month search of 500,000 acres, Gallagher said.

Finding a nest, or even better, a breeding pair of woodpeckers that
could be
nurtured, would be a major breakthrough, Gallagher said.

"It would re-energize the whole process," he said. "There are a lot of
people who really want to see some more solid evidence."

The search includes stationary observers, teams in canoes on rivers and
streams and recorders and video cameras set in the area to possibly
catch
the bird's sounds.

"We will continue to search for this bird until we find it," said Gene
Sparling, the Hot Springs canoeist who spotted the woodpecker in the
Cache
River National Wildlife Refuge. "He's out there somewhere."

Source: Associated Press

[another specialist]

sebbe67 said:

www.birdforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=35902

www.birdforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=35901

two new photos