Researchers at BirdLife International said on Friday they feared the Imperial Woodpecker, (Campephilus imperialis), was now extinct after an expedition to Mexico found no evidence of a resident population.
”The unexpected lead that this most recent expedition followed up represented a last realistic hope of finding the magnificent Imperial Woodpecker,” said BirdLife International’s Americas programme manager, David Wege.
”Once found throughout the huge Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico, right up to within 80km of the US border, targeted searches over the last 10 years have failed to find convincing evidence that it still exists.”
He said the 60cm black-and-white bird was the biggest woodpecker in the world and was not historically a rare species within its habitat of pine forests at high altitudes. The last confirmed report of the bird was in 1956, although there had been eight unconfirmed sightings since then in two remote areas of Mexico.
A joint expedition by BirdLife International and a local conservation organisation, Prosima, spent 16 days in an isolated part of north central Durango state, where in 1996, the woodpecker had been sighted in a pristine canyon. The site was close to an area where, two years before, on an expedition lasting 11 months, researchers found evidence of the bird, but had no sightings.
Wege said the Imperial Woodpecker would now be listed in the 2004 Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as critically endangered (possibly extinct).
He attributed the bird’s decline to the loss of its habitat. It required extensive areas (26 sq km per pair) of continuous open and untouched pine forest with dead trees for feeding and nesting. Although large areas of pine forests remained, they were logged, with dead trees cut down. Hunting was also thought to have contributed to the bird’s downfall.
BirdLife International is a global alliance of national conservation organisations working in more than 100 countries and are the world’s leading authority on the status of birds, their habitats and the issues and problems affecting bird life.
Founded on 5 October 1948 as the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN), following on an international conference in Fontainebleau, France. The organisation changed its name into International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1956. In 1990 it was shortened to IUCN – The World Conservation Union. – Sapa