[at-l] Ivory Billed Woodpecker

[RoksnRoots at aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)]

        If you have a local Audubon Club look up their public meetings and 
attend one if you are interested in the woods. The meetings are 3 or 4 dollars 
cover charge. The usual length is an hour and a half of brilliant slide shows 
and presentations on birds and conservation. The presenters are usually renown 
experts.

           Last night's topic was the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. It was full of 
interesting tidbits telling of their original range and numbers and 
present-day near extinction. The speaker was Jerry Jackson, Phd zoologist. This large 
woodpecker once inhabited the southern US, including the Georgia AT into North 
Carolina. Very similar in appearance to the Pileated Woodpecker (seen on the 
AT), the Ivory Billed is not closely related to its look-a-like. It is closer 
to the Flicker. The reason Pileated's remain in large numbers and the Ivory 
Billed doesn't is because it depends solely on the larvae of a large beetle that 
bores in dead snags. The Ivory Billed is heavily dependent on old growth for 
the large number of standing large trunks needed for both feeding and 
nest-building. When the US timbered its last virgin pine forests in the south, the 
Ivory Bill went with its habitat. 

         Jackson was critical of how wars affect habitat and species in the 
US. He had charts showing how post-conflict activities negatively affected 
forest quality and species counts. The downfall of the Ivory Bill was the post 
Civil War federalizing of southern forests. From there timber companies were 
allowed to lease forests for $1.25 and acre for harvesting.   Wrenching were the 
tales of how even scientists commonly shot and stuffed Ivory Bill specimens. 
The rare look of the Ivory Bill lead to collecting. In 1939 an Orlando man 
photographed two of the last remaining Ivory Bills near Orlando. Before he could 
bring a naturalist back to confirm the sighting a guide had escorted a 
taxidermist in and shot them both. They were sold for $75 dollars each to FSU. They 
were the last Ivory Bills ever seen in Florida. 

         The last American sighting was in the 1940's in a conservation tract 
in northern Louisiana. It was leased by the Singer sewing machine company up 
until the lease ran out and the old growth was cut. In 1986-87 Jackson was 
granted a special permit by the Cuban government to search for Ivory Bills. In a 
small high-elevation forest of remaining old growth on Cuba's east tip he 
found a snag with the distinctive chevron-shaped pecking marks made by the Ivory 
Bill. He also recorded several Ivory Bill calls from a distance. After staking 
out the tree at 300 meters distance for 3 days, Jackson saw what he believes 
was an Ivory Billed Woodpecker fly 30 feet in front of their lookout. This was 
the last official sighting of the great American Ivory Billed Woodpecker. 
There has been no information from Cuba since and there has been no recorded 
effort to by Cuba to protect the bird.      

          Last year there was excitement in Louisiana over the reported 
recording of an Ivory Bill call heard in a swamp. Jackson was amongst the experts 
who informed them it was only gunshots which sounded similar to the Ivory 
Bill's simple call...