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  • Cache River National Wildlife Refuge


    • AN EDITORIAL OPINION OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
    Posted on Sat, May. 14, 2005

    First, save its home

    There are moments you can only imagine. Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird Magazine, and Bobby Harrison, a professor from Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., are paddling their canoe in a bayou in Arkansas Big Woods. A big black and white bird flies across their field of view, about 70 feet away. Both see it and in unison shout exactly the same thing: "Ivory bill!" It must have been like watching Lazarus emerge from the tomb, to see such a bird, believed to be extinct.

    Even people who watch birds a lot can't know the feeling. Running into a common pileated woodpecker in the woods is delight enough. It's a big bird that takes a lot of territory, makes a lot of noise and leaves a lasting, delightful impression. But to see the one everyone thought was gone so long ago, it's the instant of a lifetime, and a discovery that should touch the hearts of everyone interested in the lives of birds, people, wildlife of all kinds. That sighting took place Feb. 27, 2004. In 7,000 hours of searching since then, there have been 15 more sightings.

    The last conclusive sighting of the bird came in Cuba in 1944. In the United States, its disappearance was thought to be one of the sad results of progress. The ivory-billed woodpecker is a shy animal with a huge appetite and a need to roam across vast tracts of forestland. It was no surprise, then, that the sightings came in the swampy forests of eastern Arkansas, a difficult place for man and, apparently, a paradise for an ivory-billed woodpecker.

    In the glow of such good news, though, it is important to remember that the story of endangered species is ongoing. Progress has extracted an immense price from nature, one that can never be repaid and one that is measured in long lists of plants and animals that have simply disappeared from the face of the Earth. The assumption was that the logging destruction of the old forests of the southeastern U.S. long ago sounded the death knell for this ivory-billed woodpecker.

    There is a lesson out in those Arkansas swamps for those who would work to preserve endangered species: If you want to save the animal, save the land on which it lives.

    � 2005 The Sun Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
    http://www.sunherald.com

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