[va-bird] Re: Looking for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (please don't)

Jim Beard makes a good point about the imperative not to harass the Arkansas 
Ivory-billed.   I'm sure that the federal authorities who will be working on 
the conservation of the bird and the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas generally, 
will see to it that no one bothers the bird (whose actual whereabouts are 
unknown in any case) - over $30 million has been pledged for this already.   
The 
bird managed to elude searchers for many months at a time, and its wariness may 
be its best protection, in truth.

There are many places in the Southeast where birders essentially never visit 
- large swampwoods and adjacent pine savannahs in western Florida, in lowland 
South Carolina, in Louisiana, and even in Mississippi - where maturing 
forests, sometimes with hurricane or fire damage (a boon for large 
woodpeckers), 
provide nearly ideal habitat for Ivory-billeds.   Some of these areas have 
recent 
sight reports of the species.   Aside from the Pearl River area of Louisiana 
(where a pair of Ivory-billeds was reported 1 April 1999), however, few such 
areas have been checked by people who might recognize the species.

The next issue of North American Birds (a publication of American Birding 
Association - www.americanbirding.org - see the website for information on 
Ivory-billeds) will have a large feature article on the Arkansas Ivory-billed, 
with 
information not presented elsewhere, but also at least one piece on searching 
for Ivory-billeds in other areas.   There will also be information on ethical 
practices and principles in the context of searches for this species.   I 
think that while we have an obligation not to harass any endangered species, we 
should consider the possibility - think of the Louisiana reports over the past 
40 years - that we might also have an ethical call to seek out this species in 
areas that might well harbor more of them.   The southern swampwoods, because 
of their difficulty of access and their general lack of other 'top-shelf' bird 
species, are among the most neglected and underbirded of North America's 
great habitats.   Perhaps the Arkansas bird will begin to change this.

So it is to be hoped that people will take interest not just in 'Elvis' (as 
searchers came to call the shy Arkansas bird) but also take interest in the 
possible persistence of this species in other areas.   After all, there have 
been 
numerous sight reports of the species in the second half of the twentieth 
century; it's just that no credible photographs have been produced.   In the 
Arkansas case, over 23,000 hours of field searching produced 3 seconds of video 
and barely 30 seconds of visual contact with the bird!   So luck is certainly 
involved.   But perhaps Cornell, or TNC, or both, can start to coordinate 
birders in ethical, logical search teams to look for this species elsewhere.   
Birders, after all, have not just extraordinary motivation to see an 
Ivory-billed: 
we also have a lifetime of field skills and instincts and patience born of 
practice, all necessary to see an Ivory-billed before it sees us (almost a 
prerequisite for a photograph, it would seem!).   Sight reports are useful, of 
course, but to save a swampwood from the axe, proof in the form of a photograph 
(or, better still, a clear videotape) is 
most desirable.   

I've heard from scores of friends and colleagues that they wept on hearing 
and reading the news or seeing the video evidence.   What brought tears to my 
eyes yesterday was when the bird's finder, Eugene Sparling of Hot Springs, 
Arkansas, stood at the noontime press conference in Washington, DC to be 
recognized, and the gathered reporters erupted in the most thunderous applause 
and howls 
of accolade I'd ever heard.   He has devoted nearly every waking moment of 
his life since seeing this bird to helping coordinate searchers and to 
protecting the bird.   He is a humble, kind gentleman who richly deserved that 
tornado 
of applause that day, as did everyone who has worked so hard over the past 
year and two months on this project.   The "Inventory Project", as they called 
their work, is just the beginning, and we birders and people who love the rich 
habitats and avifauna of this land are called, I think, to come to the aid of 
this species as best we can.   Donations to the preservation of the Arkansas 
Big Woods (www.ivorybill.org) are something we can all do, and should do.   But 
I think, too, we should offer our skills and creativity in the service of an 
expanded search: family vacations in the southern swamps - why not?   An army 
of birders and people knowledgeable about birds will be needed to find another 
Ivory-billed or perhaps a pair.   For real conservation of the species to be 
possible, conservationists will need to know first where these birds are truly 
still hanging on.   I'm willing to bet that this century holds a few more 
surprises yet.

Ned Brinkley
Cape Charles, VA




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