No, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is not officially extinct (yet)
A story of scientific authority versus local knowledge, what it takes to disprove extinction, and why people care so much about one rare bird species in the Southeastern USA.
Hannah Hunter, Queen’s University | @hannahfhunter
Over the last few weeks, news outlets have overflowed with sorrowful pronouncements that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and 22 other species have been ‘officially declared’ extinct in the USA. However, these elegies are premature.
In fact, these species have not been declared extinct, but have been recommended to be removed from the Endangered Species list by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) due to presumed extinction. Though this is a step towards officially declaring a species extinct, first there is a 60-day period of public feedback in which this extinction recommendation can be debated and potentially overturned.
This is significant, because the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s demise is perhaps the most disputed extinction event in history. Though no sighting of this species in the USA has been universally accepted since 1944 (a sub-species of the ivorybill has been spotted in Cuba more recently), there have been dozens of alleged sightings of the bird since then.
In 2005 a team from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology famously published a controversial paper in Science where they claimed to have ‘re-discovered’ the species in Arkansas. The evidence they presented — which included sound recordings, field sightings by ‘credible individuals’ and, most notably, a blurry video of a large bird flying away — was disregarded by many other ornithologists, who argued that the bird in the video was actually a Pileated Woodpecker: a smaller and much more common bird species. Other alleged re-discoveries of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the US include those of Geoffrey Hill’s team in Florida in 2006 and of Mike Collins in Louisiana between 2006 and 2008. These, too, are regularly dismissed and compared to Bigfoot or Loch-Ness Monster sightings.
Despite the controversies surrounding these searches, there are many individuals — known as ‘Ivorybill Hunters’ — who still survey the swamplands of the South-Eastern US for proof that the species lives. Indeed, several of them claim to have seen Ivory-billed Woodpeckers with their own eyes very recently.
Perhaps the most well-known modern Ivorybill Hunter is Matt Courtman — a former president of the Louisiana Ornithological Society who has spent the last 50 years studying the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. “Since I saw a pair of ivorybills in Central Louisiana on March 10, 2019”, he claims, “searching for ivorybills has been my sole occupation.”
A hard bird to give up on
There is a certain grandeur and mystique that surrounds the Ivory-billed Woodpecker — its large size, striking plumage, piercing calls, and elusive nature have enraptured birders for centuries. Considered a symbol of the Southern wilds, even John James Audubon claimed it as one of his favorite birds. Not to mention, this species has been presumed extinct and ‘rediscovered’ before, most notably in Louisiana by a team from Cornell in 1935. This explains why almost every news article about the 23 American species recommended for extinction uses the ivorybill as its poster child, as well as why people are still so committed to finding it. The ivorybill is, according to ornithologist Tim Gallagher in his book ‘The Grail Bird’, a “hard bird to give up on”.
A former lawyer, Courtman refuses to let the ivorybill be declared extinct without a fight. He claims that the extinction recommendation is not only premature but misguided, arguing that scientific and governmental authorities approach evidence about the ivorybill with unfair skepticism that has unduly disregarded “the work of such accomplished scientists as Geoff Hill and Mike Collins”.
Regarding the latter, most evidence presented by the two scientists were sound recordings of alleged ivorybills which, unfortunately, are too-easily brushed off as being the sounds of other animals like Blue Jays or Gray Squirrels. When it comes to proving a presumed extinct species actually lives, it is likely that only a clear photo or video would suffice in conclusively proving the ivorybills’ persistence to the masses.
Collins, an acoustic scientist with the Naval Research Laboratory, argues that scientific authorities need to be more open to accepting sound recordings as evidence for the ivorybill. This is because the apparent elusiveness of the species, as well as its likely dwindling number and the difficulty of accessing its habitats, means that it is extremely onerous to get clear visual evidence of these birds. Acoustic evidence, as Collins details in his recent paper in the Journal of Theoretical and Computational Acoustics and Hill et al demonstrate in their 2006 paper in Avian Conservation and Ecology, can be carefully analyzed against known recordings of ivorybills, as well as other similar animal and machinic sounds, to provide conclusive, scientific proof of the ivorybills’ survival.
There are also various photos and videos of alleged ivorybills that have been presented over the years, though these are similarly dismissed. Infamously, in 1971 George Lowry presented some clear photos of apparent ivorybills to the American Ornithological Association. Consistent with the general skepticism towards ivorybill sightings, ornithologists labelled these photos as fakes — going so far as to say the birds in the photos were stolen ivorybill taxidermy mounts that the photographer (Fielding Lewis) had affixed to trees. More recently, Collins obtained several video recordings of alleged ivorybills between 2006 and 2008, including one where a large black and white bird can be seen flying overhead in a manner consistent with historical observations of the ivorybill. These videos, alongside all others captured between 2005 and 2013, were labelled as ‘inconclusive’ in the USFWS extinction recommendation report without much explanation.
Though Courtman is confident in his and others’ evidence, he knows that it may not be sufficient to sway the opinions of what he calls the ivorybill “Denialist Camp”. As such, he has started an organization called Mission Ivorybill, which will coordinate a three-year search for proof of the birds in Louisiana starting on November 1, 2021. Though this was in the works for months before the US government’s extinction recommendation, Mission Ivorybill now seeks to provide enough proof to block this declaration. The group is currently offering a $12,000 reward for any information that leads to an active Ivory-billed Woodpecker nest.
Perhaps surprisingly, Courtman is not dismayed but excited about the extinction recommendation. He says the feedback process finally gives Ivorybill Hunters an opportunity to formally present evidence and, hopefully, be properly listened to. Over the next few weeks, Ivorybill Hunters from across the world will be meeting weekly to gather evidence, discuss strategies, and formulate their rebuttal.
Extinction according to whom?
When we think about extinction, we think about a hard line: this species used to exist but now it doesn’t — there are none of this kind left, it has been lost. But as this process shows, declaring an animal extinct is actually quite tricky — it is very hard to ever know with 100% certainty that a species no longer exists. Indeed, the term ‘Lazarus taxon’ refers to species, like the Formosan Clouded Leopard and the Philippine Naked-backed Fruit Bat, that were re-discovered after declared or presumed extinction.
For the U.S. government’s part, their recommendation to remove these 23 species from the Endangered Species Act list is motivated by practicality. By removing these species that have a very low probability of survival, they can focus their limited resources on species that might still have a chance for recovery, like the Whooping Crane and the Black-footed Ferret. ‘Extinction’ here is thus not exactly a statement of fact, but rather a strategic declaration based on probability and politics.
In large part, this is a story of local knowledge versus scientific authority. According to Courtman, many locals in Louisiana — particularly hunters — have seen ivorybills in recent years, and there is some resentment about authorities like the USFWS “telling [Louisianans] what’s in our forests”. For his part, Courtman does not believe there has been sufficient, systematic searches for the ivorybill undertaken by the USFWS, a gap that Mission Ivorybill intends to fill.
Courtman says that one of the reasons he is so committed to proving the bird still lives is because of its cultural importance to Louisiana. “[The Ivory-billed Woodpecker] is a symbol of the great bottomland hardwood for us, and it could be a symbol of the passing frontier”, he says, “I think it’ll be a story of hope… even if we never proved the bird’s persistence, it’s going to be a story of perseverance on our behalf — of really people trying to go out there and… putting in the effort”.
@hannahfhunter | hannah.hunter@queensu.ca
