[mou] Fwd: Discouraging an Ivory-billed Woodpecker search...

[Jim Williams]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Paul J. Baicich" <paul.baicich@swarovskibirding.com>
Date: May 2, 2005 5:44:43 AM CDT
Subject: Discouraging an Ivory-billed Woodpecker search...


Dear colleagues....

Here's an article from this morning's ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION. At
least it suggests that waiting 'til fall is the way to look for the
Ivory-bill. BUt that's not enough... I hope that the USFWS has a 
specific
search/visitation policy in place soon...

			Paul

  - - - - -

ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

Newfound bird hidden till fall
Watchers must wait until dense foliage dies back to see ivory-bill 
woodpecker.
Charles Seabrook - Staff
Monday, May 2, 2005

Dixie, Ark. --- Dangling vines thick as a man's leg festoon the soaring
stands of tupelos, cypresses, pines, sweet gums and other ancient trees
that border the Mississippi River lowlands called the "Big Woods" by 
Nobel
laureate William Faulkner.

So dense is the forbidding tangle of spring foliage now in the Cache 
River
National Wildlife Refuge that searchers eager for another sighting of 
the
ivory-bill woodpecker must wait until fall, says Doug Zollner of the 
Nature
Conservancy's Arkansas chapter.

Nevertheless, Woodruff County, Ark., Sheriff Freddie Hudson is bracing 
for
heavy traffic on the narrow country lanes of his jurisdiction as birders
from around the world flock to the refuge to try to get a glimpse of the
bird long thought extinct.

Worldwide interest

In a dramatic announcement last week, ornithologists and top government
officials declared that at least one of the charismatic creatures --- 
known
to rural folk in the Deep South as the "Lord God Bird" --- had been 
found
during the past year in the refuge, an integral part of the 550,000-acre
Big Woods ecosystem. Most experts generally agree that perhaps more than
two dozen of the birds exist there.

Sam Hamilton, regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's
regional office in Atlanta, who will be develop a plan to protect the
birds, said Hudson would be well-advised to gear up for a crowd. 
Hamilton
said his agency also is gearing up for a heavy influx of visitors.

"Birders around the world would love nothing more than to come here and 
see
this bird," he said.

The ivory-bill, last seen in 1944 in northern Louisiana, once ranged 
across
the Southeast in places like the Big Woods. Come fall, searches also are
expected to go forth in other Southeastern bottomland forests, including
Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp and in the Pearl River wildlife management 
area
in Louisiana and Mississippi.

A group of naturalists, wildlife biologists and reporters ventured into 
the
Cache River refuge at week's end to get a feel for why the ivory-billed
woodpecker, a crow-size bird with a red-crested head and black-and-white
markings, could elude even the most diligent searcher for decades.

The reason was obvious. Beyond the Cache River and its small tributaries
that twist through the refuge, the vast bottomland swamp and forest is
nearly impenetrable as trees and shrubs seemingly vie for nearly every 
inch
of space. Getting canoes into such an area is foreboding, especially 
during
periods of low water, said refuge manager Dennis Widner. Walking in the
mushy mud, which can sink an adult waist-deep, is nigh impossible, he 
said.

The woods along both sides of the river was redolent of thick mud and
decaying vegetation --- the smell of a rich, healthy swamp. A barred owl
hooted. From nearly every direction, birds sang --- great crested
flycatchers, Carolina wrens, prothonotary warblers and rose-breasted
grosbeaks.

A banded water snake swam alongside the bank, his head poking above 
water
the color of cafe au lait.

Poisonous snakes such as aggressive cottonmouth water moccasins --- 
whose
bite can kill --- also abound here: One ivory-bill searcher encountered 
17
cottonmouths in one 20-minute stretch, Widner said. That's why 
birdwatching
visitors are admonished to keep a close eye for snakes on the ground ---
limiting their chances of seeing a bird flitting overhead.

"It's dangerous work to be out in these swamps --- even in the winter,"
Widner said.

Researchers with Cornell, the Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and others spent most of the past year floating in 
canoes,
looking for the ivory-bill or for signs of it, such as roost or nesting
holes. Their systematic search began after kayakers reported an 
ivory-bill
sighting in February 2004.

Conservation credited

Most experts believe the woodpecker became extinct in the United States
because its habitat of old-growth forest and bottomland swamp was felled
for timber and drained, the rich soils planted in cotton, corn, soybeans
and other crops or the land developed.

Before the time of European settlement, about 52 million acres of the
Southeast were a wilderness of bottomland hardwood forests --- forests 
that
develop in the floodplains of slow-moving rivers and streams. Trees have
their roots in wet soil and their trunks often in standing water.

Biologists say that finding the ivory-bill validates decades of
conservation work and the billions of dollars spent to protect what 
remains
of the once-vast ecosystem. Conservationists worldwide hail what is 
left as
a "wetland of international importance" --- one of only a few such 
places
on Earth so designated. More needs to be saved, they say. "We have to
protect as much as we can, as fast as we can," said Scott Simon, 
executive
director of the Arkansas Nature Conservancy.

Fortunately, he said, more than two-thirds of the Big Woods' 550,000 
acres
already are protected by state and federal wildlife refuges and private
conservation easements.

The Cache refuge, said Widner, is home to several endangered species.

"And now, we have the crown jewel of endangered species, the 
ivory-billed
woodpecker," he said.