You've probably never heard of the ivory-billed woodpecker. It's highly likely that you've never been within 100 miles of one, if at all. In fact, the poor old bird may have vanished from the face of the earth decades ago.
But it may still be out there. And the debate as to its persistence continues to rage among the U.S. birding community.
First, a brief bit of background:
The largest of the woodpeckers north of Mexico and the third largest in the world, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was a bird of old-growth forests in the southeastern U.S. and Cuba. Destruction of its forest habitat caused severe population declines in the 1800s, and only very small numbers survived into the twentieth century. It was thought to have gone extinct in the middle of the twentieth century. The bird was rediscovered in the "Big Woods" region of eastern Arkansas in 2004, but has not been relocated since.
As a small aside: It's not fully accurate to claim that "destruction of its forest habitat" is solely responsible for the bird's destruction. It also turns out that these birds are obscenely finicky and can't exist without several hundred million square feet of living space:
From historical data [Ph.D student James Tanner] estimated there was one pair of birds per 25 km2 (10 sq mi) in the California swamp in northern Florida and one pair per 16 km2 (6 sq mi) along the Wacissa river, he produced an understanding that these birds need large amounts of suitable territory to find enough food to feed themselves and their young, and thus they should be expected occur at low densities even in healthy populations.
Yeah it certainly doesn't help the survival rate of your species if your population density is one married couple per 10 square miles!
Anyway, moving on: It's not quite true that the bird "has not been relocated since." In fact, there are a fair number of individuals who claim to have sighted these elusive birds in the years since:
Scientists from Auburn University and the University of Windsor published a paper describing a search for ivory-billed woodpeckers along the Choctawhatchee River from 2005 to 2006, during which they recorded 14 sightings of ivory-billed woodpeckers, 41 occasions on which double-knocks or kent calls were heard, and 244 occasions on which double-knocks or kentcalls were recorded. They analysed those recordings and conducted examinations of tree cavities and bark stripping by woodpeckers seen during the search and determined them to be consistent with the behavior of ivory-billed woodpeckers, but inconsistent with the behavior of pileated woodpeckers. In 2008, the sightings and sound detections largely dried up and the team ended their searches in 2009.
Ornithologists—hewing closely to Marvin Gaye's advice to "believe half of what you see ... and none of what you hear"—have been reluctant to accept these sightings as proof. But there have been others:
Mike Collins reported ten sightings of ivory-billed woodpeckers between 2006 and 2008. He obtained video evidence at the Pearl River in Louisiana in 2006 and 2008 and at the Choctawhatchee River in Florida in 2007. His analyses of these sightings and videos were published in peer-reviewed journal articles. These reports, like all others since 1944, have encountered skepticism. Collins argues that the lack of clear photographs after 1944 is a function of species behavior and habitat, and that the expected time interval between clear photographs will be several orders of magnitude greater than it would be for a more typical species of comparable rarity.
These birds are just so darn ornery! No pun intended. But that's not all: There have even been sightings as recently as seven months ago:
Project Principalis, a team of "researchers, community scientists, and nature enthusiasts" searching for the ivory-billed woodpecker, took photographs on November 2019, 9 January 2020, 1 October 2021, and 14 October 2021 that they argue depict ivory-billed woodpeckers.
Well, that sounds like a slam-dunk! Right? But wait: When these folks say they "took photographers," this is what they mean:
Yeah I gotta say that's not terribly convincing. Then again, these images are from trail cameras. They're not capturing these birds with a 30MP Canon DSLR. You're not gonna get hyper-sharp resolution. So maybe we should take the bird folks at their word—they would know.
But the U.S. government isn't having it: They believe this bird is dead and gone, and doggone it, they're going to make it official:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to remove 23 species from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) due to extinction. Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the Service has determined these species are extinct, and thus no longer require listing under the ESA. ...
Ivory-billed woodpecker – Once America's largest woodpecker, it was listed in 1967 as endangered under the precursor to the ESA, the Endangered Species Preservation Act (ESPA). The last commonly agreed upon sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker was in April 1944 on the Singer Tract in the Tensas River region of northeast Louisiana. Despite decades of extensive survey efforts throughout the southeastern U.S. and Cuba, it has not been relocated. Primary threats leading to its extinction were the loss of mature forest habitat and collection.
A final declaration from Fish and Wildlife is expected in September of this year. Who knows: maybe they're right and it's gone. Or maybe they're wrong and it's still out there.
If you see one when you're out and about in the deep woods of Arkansas and Louisiana, do please let us know!
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