Scientists have rediscovered one of the great birds of the United States, feared extinct for 60 years — a find hailed by scientists as being comparable to the reappearance of the dodo.
The ivory-billed woodpecker, believed to have disappeared along with the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet, has been seen in the Big Woods region of Arkansas by at least eight people.
The woodpecker was one of six American species thought to have disappeared in the past 125 years. The last confirmed sighting had been in 1944.
On Friday a team of ornithologists and conservationists report in the online edition of Science that they have drawings and video footage of the bird’s unmistakable plumage.
”This is not any old bird. This is a really special creature, America’s largest woodpecker, the third largest in the world; spectacularly beautiful,” said John Fitzpatrick, the director of Cornell University’s laboratory of ornithology. ”It is legendary, it is mysterious, it has been a majestic symbol of the old forests of the American south.”
Alistair Gammell of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said: ”This bird’s rediscovery is not quite like finding the dodo, but it comes very, very close. Thrillingly, we now have a chance to save this magnificent species.”
The woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, lives in a habitat of mature and dying trees. It all but vanished as vast swaths of the southern forests fell to the axe and the plough in the 19th century.
There had been a series of unconfirmed reports in the last century that the species might have survived. Then in February 2003, a kayaker saw a large, red-crested woodpecker fly towards him in the Big Woods, a 225 000ha habitat of oak forest, swamp and rivers.
He returned two weeks later with two scientists, Tim Gallagher of Cornell University and Bobby Harrison from Oakwood College, Alabama. A large black-and-white bird landed 20m from them.
”When we finished our notes, Bobby sat down on a log, put his face in his hands and began to sob, ‘I saw an ivory-bill, I saw an ivory-bill,”’ Gallagher said.
Gallagher was too choked with emotion to speak.
”Just to think this bird made it into the 21st century gives me chills. It’s like a funeral shroud has been pulled back, giving us a glimpse of a living bird, rising Lazarus-like from the grave.”
On April 25, David Luneau of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock was kayaking through the region with his video camera running. He captured four seconds of ”really, really crummy video” — including 1,2s of the bird in flight. It was enough to identify the woodpecker conclusively.
Experts have now spent 7 000 hours looking for the bird and made at least 15 sightings, including one of a woodpecker being mobbed by crows.
There are fewer than 10 000 bird species on earth. More than 1 000 are expected to become extinct in this century. The rediscovery of a dramatic and beautiful American native, in woodland used by hunters, presents conservationists with a new set of challenges.
The US nature conservancy has been working with landowners to conserve and restore lowland hardwood and swamp ecosystems. The next step is to restore more than 80 000ha of primeval forest and swamp, home to deer, black bear, 265 species of other birds and most of the fish native to the lower Mississippi.
No one knows whether the observers have seen several birds, or the same one over and over again. But woodpeckers have a 15-year lifespan; one breeding pair must have survived into the last decade, and others may still be nesting.
”This is really the holy grail for birders,” Fitzpatrick said. ”It is also a symbol for those of us who tenaciously cling to the idea that humans and the earth’s natural systems can live side by side.
The idea that we didn’t in fact completely wipe out the southern forests is just unspeakably exciting, and it gives us major hope for the future.”
Verging on extinction
Spix’s macaw
The last known wild specimen perished in 2001. Around 60 birds survive in zoos or private collections
Alagoas curassow
Believed extinct in the wild in Brazil. A total of 44 birds exist in captivity, according to Birdlife International
The Guam rail
Flourished on the island of Guam until the reintroduction of the brown tree snake. Now 180 birds have been bred in captivity, for release into snake-free zones
The Socorro dove
Was last seen in the Mexican wilderness in 1972. But captive birds survive in the US and Germany
Hawaiian crow
The last wild bird died in 2002. Some bred in captivity have been released into the wild
Bermuda petrel
Believed extinct for 300 years, it was rediscovered on a rocky offshore island, free of rats, in 1950 – Guardian Unlimited Â