[mou] Re: [mnbird] NPR text on Ivory-billed discovery

[Sharon Stiteler]

I always knew that they had found the bird and were keeping it secret.

--=20
Sharon Stiteler
Minneapolis, MN
www.birdchick.com



on 4/27/05 10:49 PM, Jim Williams at two-jays@att.net wrote:

> Text from NPR web site.
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3D4622633
> Jim Williams
> Wayzata
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
> Radio Expeditions
> Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Rediscovered
> Audio for this story will be available at approx. 10:00 a.m. ET
>=20
> Morning Edition, April 28, 2005 =B7 A group of wildlife scientists
> believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct. They say they have
> made seven firm sightings of the bird in central Arkansas. The landmark
> find caps a search that began more than 60 years ago, after biologists
> said North America=B9s largest woodpecker had become extinct in the
> United States.
>=20
>   The large, showy bird is an American legend -- it disappeared when the
> big bottomland forests of North America were logged, and relentless
> searches have produced only false alarms. Now, in an intensive
> year-long search in the Cache River and White River national wildlife
> refuges involving more than 50 experts and field biologists working
> together as part of the Big Woods Partnership, an ivory-billed male has
> been captured on video.
>=20
> "We have solid evidence, there are solid sightings, this bird is here,"
> says Tim Barksdale, a wildlife photographer and biologist.
>=20
> For an NPR/National Geographic Radio Expeditions story, NPR science
> correspondent Christopher Joyce joined the search last January along
> Arkansas=B9 White River, where a kayaker spotted what he believed to be
> an ivory-billed woodpecker more than a year ago. Many other similar
> sightings over the last 60 years have raised false hopes.
>=20
>   But this time, Joyce reports that experts associated with the Cornell
> Laboratory of Ornithology in New York and The Nature Conservancy were
> able to confirm the sighting. They kept the find a secret for more than
> a year, partly to give conservation groups and government agencies time
> to protect the bird=B9s habitat.
>=20
> The Nature Conservancy has been buying and protecting land along the
> White and Cache Rivers for years, along with the state and the federal
> Fish and Wildlife Service. Since the discovery, they've bought more
> land to protect the bird.
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