'Extinct' Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Found

ELKCHSR

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'Extinct' Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Found in Arkansas
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ivory-billed woodpecker, long feared extinct, has been rediscovered in a remote part of Arkansas some 60 years after the last confirmed U.S. sighting, bird experts said on Thursday.

Several people have seen and heard an ivory-billed woodpecker in a protected forest in eastern Arkansas near the last reliable sighting of the bird in 1944, and one was captured on video last year.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), long suspected to be extinct, has been rediscovered in the 'Big Woods' region of eastern Arkansas," researchers wrote in the journal Science in an article hastily prepared for release.

"Visual encounters during 2004 and 2005, and analysis of a video clip from April 2004, confirm the existence of at least one male."

Drumming sounds made by the birds have also been heard, the researchers said.

"This is huge. Just huge," said Frank Gill, senior ornithologist at the Audubon Society. "It is kind of like finding Elvis."

Gill said there is little doubt the sightings are genuine. The experts were expected to display some of the evidence at a news conference at the U.S. Department of the Interior later on Thursday.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of six North American bird species suspected or known to have gone extinct since 1880," wrote the researchers, led by John Fitzpatrick of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology in New York.

"The others are Labrador duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), Eskimo curlew (Numenius borealis), Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), and Bachman's warbler (Vermivora bachmanii)."

BIG BUT SHY

A large, dramatic-looking bird, the ivory-billed woodpecker was known to be shy and to prefer the deep woods of the U.S. Southeast.

"Its disappearance coincided with systematic annihilation of virgin tall forests across southeastern United States between 1880 and the 1940s," the researchers wrote.

People claimed to have seen it but the bird closely resembles the pileated woodpecker, which is noisy, less shy and quite common.

More reliable sightings were reported in Cuba as late as the 1980s.

"There have been lots and lots of reports and many of them have been off but others have been possible," Gill said in a telephone interview. "But this time we got it."

Gill said the bird was seen just over the border from Louisiana where the last documented ivory-bill was seen in 1944. "As a woodpecker flies it's not far," he said.

The birds only live about 15 years so the sightings mean they must be breeding somewhere.

"There has got to be a pretty serious lineage," Gill said. "It's got to be more than a few."

People are likely to flock to the area to try to see the birds themselves but it will be difficult, Gill said.

"It is not something you just go down and see. Your odds are very low," Gill said. "It is remote, difficult country. This time of year it is getting very buggy and very snakey and there is a lot of foliage."

But the discovery may help get protection for a larger area of the Big Woods, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy said.

"This area was once the largest expanse of forested wetlands in the country, originally consisting of 21 million acres of bottomland hardwood forests. Today, only 4.9 million acres remain, mostly in scattered woodland patches," it says on its Internet Web site.

"It's just the most exciting report in my lifetime. I think we will move ... to make this a globally important bird wildlife area," Gill said.
 
Neat, I have seen the birds in Denver at the Museum of Science and Natural History. The area that they are talking of is not too far from where I live and even closer to the new Deer lease. Thanks
 
It would be cool I think to bring this one back...

It also amazes me that some thing this large can escape detection from all of the oligests in this country for so long, I wonder how many other creatures thought extinct or haven't been proven but are basically known about are hiding in our "Ever shrinking" environmnets...
:)
 
Great news!! I've been hoping to see one all my life. I can remember my mother telling me about them when I was a kid and telling me to look for them when I was out in the woods because they were very rare and some people thought they might even be extinct.
 
Now let's hear from all the SI crackpots who think it's natural for so many species to be going extinct and we don't need them anyway. You know, all the crap we read from them when some snail or minnow is endangered and they think saving a snail is holding up "progress". :rolleyes:
 
It all depends on the context and the place that progress is being held up, there are many cases where it has gotten way out of hand, and in others where it never went far enough, but those should be reviewed on a case by case basis and not as a generic rule... :)
 
Well good know one escaped, anyway i love woodpeckers, i have pic of one outside up in the tree peckin away, so difficult see, i see very few blue jays cardinals to i saw few i got pic right there, even took pic of me chasin bunny it let me then stood stil lgot good close up:), anyway scientist make smistakes they cant lie:D
 
I watched a news spot on it here in Idaho
I think it great that they found it but it also makes you wonder just how many other creatures are out there that no one can see........
 
Ithaca, In Arkansas they call Bigfoot the Boggy Creek Monster after a creature seen around Fouke, a small town in Southern Arkansas and a very bad 1970s Movie! It was mostly seen during the making of the movie. :D
 
I wanted to see a pic of this bird. Ithaca's article has a nice one.

Here is another:

Ivory-billed%20Woodpecker%20mini.gif
 
I would also like to see one.
Ithaca chill out,
qiut taking shots in every thread you post in.
Thats exactly why I give ya chit.
we are probably alot closer in our views than you would think.
 
Really cool story. I hope they find more of them and can find out some real population info. Did anyone else read about the taxidermist killing two of them in Florida with the 20's with the states permission so he could stuff them? Now that is crazy.
 
Heck, there's a whole flock stuffed in Denver...I think it's weird when you read something on the glass of a display that states this (whatever is now extinct) and you have a whole flock of them stuffed!
 

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