The Return of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

For birders like me, this week’s announcement of a confirmed sighting in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct for more than 60 years, was good news. It was good news not only for this rare woodpecker but also for the rest of us to see it is possible to reverse humankind’s destruction of the land and witness a positive outcome.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, campephilus principalis Linnaeus, is known as the Lord God bird because that was what people said when they saw it. With its bright white bill, crimson crest and distinctive black and white plumage, this 20-inch bird with a 30-inch wingspan must be a sight to see.

It is hard to believe that its habitat, the mature, swampy, riverine forests of the southeastern United States would have any appeal to developers. James Audubon, writing over 150 years ago, described the region this way:

Would that I could describe the extent of those deep morasses, overshadowed by millions of gigantic dark cypresses, spreading their sturdy moss-covered branches, as if to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties which he must encounter, should he persist in venturing farther into their almost inaccessible recesses, extending for miles before him, where he should be interrupted by huge projecting branches, here and there the massive trunk of a fallen and decaying tree, and thousands of creeping and twining plants of numberless species.

In fact, it was the mature trees in those wetlands that were the attraction, cut down to make sewing machine cases, coffins and ammunition boxes in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

The ivorybill was first sighted a year ago but the sighting was kept under wraps to confirm its existence and to secure more land to protect its habitat. The Nature Conservancy has worked for the past 20 years to buy land in the area of the sighting and now owns 120,000 acres. Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced that the agency along with the /department of Agriculture would spend $10 million for research, habitat protection and law enforcement efforts to protect the bird. This is an example of private and government agencies collaborating in a single effort, although I am sure the present administration was eager to attach itself to such an admirable cause as saving this noble bird.

Although I will probably never see an ivorybill, I am content to know that this magnificent bird may be able to breed and continue to live in its native habitat.

Perhaps the American farmer will be saved from extinction as well.