Laura Erickson’s For the Birds

Clinging to hope that a disappearing species still exists is natural for people with any sense of empathy or love of nature, and birders yearning to see every possible species can’t help but be hopeful for more selfish reasons as well. But some people and corporations have a vested interest in wanting endangered species to disappear altogether. When a species is officially declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, its habitat on private and even public land loses what little legal protection it still had. So lumber companies, power companies, developers, landowners, large corporations, etc. routinely try to discredit even valid reports of endangered birds.

In 2004, Tim Gallagher of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a well-known, respected, and knowledgeable birder, and his friend Bobby Harrison documented a sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. The Lab put together a search to get photos, sound recordings, video, and any other physical evidence that the bird still existed.

The last confirmed sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker took place seventy years before that, in the “Singer Tract” in northeastern Louisiana in 1935, when Cornell scientists got photographs and recordings; 1937-1941, when researcher James Tanner conducted a comprehensive study of the species; 1943, when Audubon’s Richard Pough found a single female during a 6-week search, and 1944, when artist Don Eckelberry, on Pough’s advice, spent two weeks observing and sketching a female—the last universally accepted sighting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker ever in the United States. I was thrilled to hear Cornell’s big announcement of Gallagher and Harrison’s sighting and eager to go to Arkansas to help with the search. I’d have joined the Lab team in a heartbeat (the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has long been my personal Mecca), but Cornell University (not the Lab itself) insisted on full ownership of all photos and recordings taken by everyone on the team, and no one on the team would be allowed to share publicly any information about the search that hadn’t been vetted by university officials.

At the time, I was writing a blog for a local optics company; to justify paid time to go to Arkansas, I obviously had to write about and post photos of the trip. I wouldn’t have minded handing over all rights to any photos, video, or sound recordings I managed to get of a real, live Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but I needed pictures of scenery and habitat, everyday birds like Tufted Titmice, souvenirs, and those kinds of things for my blog. So I put together my own “team”—me, my friend Paula Lozano, and my little dog Photon, and we lit out for the territory on January 2, 2006. Once in Arkansas, we added a fourth team member, Jimmy (named for James Tanner), a large wooden Ivory-bill created by Brinkley artist Rita Moore. Jimmy migrated north and now lives in my living room.

Before the search was even underway, some people were already discrediting Gallagher and Harrison’s report, several quite vigorously. The last universally accepted and undisputed sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the United States was Eckelberry’s in 1944, and the last in Cuba in 1986 and 1987. Some extremely competent birders, researchers, and conservationists had spent decades in good habitat from Florida to Texas and never found, or at least documented with photos, recordings, feathers, or other indisputable evidence, an Ivory-bill.

Some of the naysayers figured it was time to let go and focus limited conservation dollars and effort on species that had a better long-term chance of survival if given enough resources. Others seemed more driven by arrogance or competitiveness than altruistic motives—some of the most vociferous skeptics had far less birding experience than me but enjoyed spouting off. Either way, they gave fodder to developers, lumber companies, and right-wing organizations framing any regulations to protect endangered species as government overreach, anti-business, and interference with lands that could be used for lumber, agriculture, or development to benefit nothing more than tree-huggers and birds that were not worth saving even if they did still exist.

When I went to Arkansas, I had absolutely no expectation that I’d see one, and sure enough, I spent 27 days of my life not seeing an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas. But then again, I’ve spent the other 27,351 days of my life so far not seeing an Ivory-bill, too. I still treasure the adventure.
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s status has stayed contentious. In September 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing the species from the Endangered Species list and declaring it extinct, but so far neither they nor the American Ornithological Society has declared it extinct, even as not one conclusive photo, video, or sound recording has come to light. Like Schrödinger’s cat, we simply cannot know with absolute certainty whether the species is alive or dead.