[TN-Bird] Eloquent View on Ivory Billed Woodpecker

The following letter exactly echoes my sentiment concerning the Hooplah over 
the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. There is little I go add to this post from Georgia 
Birders but WOW.
Sandy Pangle
Whitfield County Georgia




I just needed to express my utter exhilaration, and subsequent concern,
about the Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers in Arkansas. I imagine that most of
us have had similar emotions or imagined the same things I have whenever
we turned to "that page" in our field guides. The stately, tantalizing
image of this amazing creature, just a ghost of an entity lost to
ignorance and greed; it was an icon of all that is wrong with
human-environmental interactions. And like many folks, I have fantasized
about spending some future vacation in the deepest, muckiest, remote
backwaters of the Southeast all alone in a kayak... to somehow be the
person to come back and say "Yes, they are still with us." And of
course, there are scores - if not hundreds - of people across the US who
have done just that, who have dedicated their lives to being in the
presence of this black-and- white phantom.

So today, reading the stories of the people who actually were there, who
actually did see these birds, who really did come back and tell all of
us -  "Yes, there's hope. We found them, and they are amazing!"... I
can't describe the feelings. It's as if a fire of hope was set ablaze in
my heart, the whole day somehow changed... I told all my co-workers with
an air of glee and giddiness reminiscent of the 8th-graders I teach -
and of course they looked at me funny and told me I'm a "bird nerd" as
usual.

So now what? Well... all the good people who have devoted so much time
and emotion to finding this bird, they want to see them.
Conservationists and scientists, they want to see them. Good-hearted
birdwatchers, they want to see them. The average outdoors enthusiasts,
everyone... yes, me, me, me...
I want to see them. But alas... in doing so, would we have learned
nothing from the past 60 years before this glorious day? People are
already talking about making travel plans, they are pouring over the
articles to glean every tiny pertinent detail, staring at the aerial
photos, the ground photos... writing e-mails to any contacts they may
have on "the inside"... cross-checking satellite images and gazetteers,
GPS coordinates... they want to see them, and doggone if they aren't
going to try.

So I worry. And I know I shouldn't... but I can't help it. Because I
know that of the millions of birding enthusiasts in this country - the
ethical and the not-so-much-so - if they have even half the motivation
(and perhaps one tenth the prudence) of myself, there will soon be
hordes of human beings once again encroaching on the last vestiges of
habitat left in which these creatures may endure.

Do I dream of paddling alone on a quiet, misty bayou in northeast
Arkansas... to look up and see a majestic ghost swoop through the trees
before my eyes? Of course. But if I actually tried to turn the dream
into reality, and so does everyone else, then I wouldn't be alone at
all. I would be in a sea of people with good intentions... drowning the
object of our affection.

Ken Blankenship
Marietta, GA (East Cobb County)

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