NYT: Vindication for Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and Its Fans

[Pirate Smile]

By JAMES GORMAN and ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: August 2, 2005

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.


An artist rendering of the ivory-billed woodpecker, as provided by the journal Science.

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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02bird.html?hp&ex=1122955200&en=30bfaf841c575eba&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[democrat in Tallahassee]

1. bET CHENEY'D LIKE TO SHOOT ONE. FLY AWAY BOYS

GO TO CANADA OR MEXICO. RUN RUN, FLY AWAY

[NNadir]

2. One has to think that there are more than two.

One hopes.

I'm just concerned that studying the situation will result in damage to whatever population exists. One hopes that this will be handled very, very delicately indeed.