Free Republic

The struggle to prove the majestic bird still exists has obsessed believers and exasperated doubters for a century. Now photographer Bobby Harrison is racing to document the species once and for all before the government declares it extinct The bird has many names, often divinely inspired: the Lord God Bird, the Lazarus Bird, the Ghost Bird, the Grail Bird. Bobby Harrison is a religious man, but he doesn’t like any of them. He prefers to call it what it is: an ivory-billed woodpecker. “Well,” he says with a shrug, “it is just a bird, after all.” That might seem like...

A small band of searchers rousts itself each morning from a secret camp deep in the woods of a forgotten northwest Florida swamp. They have endured freezing nights, foul drinking water, long stints without showers and an outhouse with only one wall, all in a search for a ghostly creature that may not even exist. They are on a quest to find and photograph an ivory-billed woodpecker to show the world the bird is not extinct. They have invited me along for a two-day glimpse into a mission that is as inspiring as it is mundane. In the past few...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A federal judge halted a $320 million irrigation project Thursday for fear it could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that may or may not be extinct. The dispute involves the ivory-billed woodpecker. The last confirmed sighting of the bird in North America was in 1944, and scientists had thought the species was extinct until 2004, when a kayaker claimed to have spotted one in the area. But scientists have been unable to confirm the sighting. Still, U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson said that for purposes of the lawsuit brought by environmental groups, he had...

Doubts cast on superstar woodpecker's return 12:36 13 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Bob Holmes The apparent rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in 2005 – hailed as one of the great conservation triumphs of recent times – may be merely a case of mistaken identity, according to a new study. In April 2005, researchers led by John Fitzpatrick at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, announced in the journal Science that the woodpecker, believed extinct for 60 years, had been seen alive in the swamps of eastern Arkansas, US. And they had a video of the bird...

Bird in question was thought to be extinct Three biologists are questioning the evidence used by a team of bird experts who made the electrifying claim in April that they had sighted an ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird presumed to have vanished from the United States more than 60 years ago, in the swampy forests of southeastern Arkansas. If the challenge holds up, it would not only undermine a scientific triumph -- the rediscovery of a resplendent bird that had been exhaustively sought for years -- but also significant new conservation expenditures in the region. The paper questioning the discovery has...