Twenty years ago, Chris Pague picked up a stuffed specimen of an ivory-billed woodpecker and marveled at what had been lost.
So the news that the magnificent bird has been found in an Arkansas swamp six decades after it was thought to be extinct hit the Nature Conservancy ecologist like a thunderclap.
“It was such a religious experience to hold those specimens,” he said Thursday at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “This is one of those pivotal moments in conservation.”
The rediscovery of a bird thought to have vanished because of overlogging of its swamp habitat electrified scientists and birders, and sharpened the long-standing debate over how best to conserve rare and imperiled species.
The discovery conclusively demonstrates the importance of preserving “big, intact landscapes,” Pague said.
“These hardwood swamps were protected for warblers and ducks – not ivory-bills,” he said. “But it has the big, old trees the ivory-bill needs.”
Rediscovery of the striking bird also will launch a storm of new research.
Rob Roy Ramey II, the Denver museum’s zoology curator, intends to start a DNA study from tissue in the feet of the six ivory-bills in its collection within two weeks. The DNA from those and other specimens might then be compared with eggshells from wild birds to determine how much genetic diversity has been lost.
The team of researchers that obtained conclusive video of an ivory- bill made several more sightings and announced its findings Thursday in the journal Science.
Federal officials immediately moved to protect the woodpecker. Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced $10 million in federal funding, to go with $10 million already raised by private groups, to create a conservation plan to help restore the ivory-bill.
North America’s largest woodpecker, the bird was named for the long, ivory-colored bill it uses to pry grubs from dying swamp trees.
It is considered the Holy Grail for birders, who find its striking plumage and imperial demeanor so magnificent that some dubbed it “the Lord God bird” – as in “Lord God, what a bird.”
Many conservation groups say the ivory-bill’s persistence is proof that the Endangered Species Act should be retained, including elements that require protecting the kind of habitat critical for species recovery.
“Any reduction in protection is likely to spell doom of many, many species that are not as special or showy as ivory-bill but have the same right to existence,” said David Ehrenfeld, a Rutgers professor and founder of Conservation Biology Magazine.
But the Bush administration said Thursday’s news validates its conservation model. The ivory-bill was found in an area where public and private partnerships helped create necessary conditions for the bird to recover.
“We don’t have the time to take sides, because the world is changing and we have to conserve as much as we can as fast as we can,” said Scott Simon, executive director of the Arkansas Nature Conservancy. Some question whether the ivory-bill will benefit from all the attention.
“This is great for conservation,” said Ehrenfeld. “It’s probably not a good thing for the bird. Too many people will look for it.”
But the most immediate and certain result of the ivory-bill’s rediscovery, observers agree, is a big dose of hope, optimism and wonder.
“It’s the Lazarus bird – it was ‘extinct’ for generations, and now it’s back,” said birder and local author Mark Obmascik. “There’s something magical about having something like the ivory-bill living on after all this time – in spite of us.”
Staff writer Theo Stein can be reached at 303-820-1657 or tstein@denverpost.com.
