Ivory-billed Woodpecker - R.I.P.?

I.                  Background

One day soon this entire sordid Ivory-billed Woodpecker will be discussed
openly and the lies and government scams will be exposed.  The perpetrators
from Cornell University and The Nature Conservancy to the US Fish and
Wildlife Service and state fish and wildlife agencies will be shown to be
the shills and conmen they are but even those still employed will shrug and
remain unaccountable for things that would put you and I in prison.

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has been (and remains) extinct for more than 60
years.  When, several years ago, it was leaked that Cornell and the US Fish
and Wildlife Service were sending expeditions into the periodically flooded
woodlands in Arkansas in search of a "reported" Ivory-billed Woodpecker I
was skeptical.  I hunted those woods for ducks years ago and the likelihood
of this extinct Woodpecker going undetected and unreported for that time I
found to be unbelievable.  Alas, when I mentioned this in a Congressional
Office one day a phone call to a renowned "ornithologist" evoked the fact
that I was nuts.  I almost walked away from the affair until I discovered
that over $14 Million had already been spent on this "secret" affair.  The
money was hidden by Congress and the US Fish and Wildlife Service so as not
to arouse the ire of us ignoramuses that wouldn't understand how important
this was.

I found this to be outrageous and wrote several articles and letters to
southern editors to that end.  One "fan" that identified himself as some
sort of Woodpecker "Team Leader" wrote me to dispute my contention.  As I
remember it the correspondence began something like how "you and all your
North Carolina pig farmer friends could.." and went downhill from there.
Answering such insightful criticism when I neither live in North Carolina
nor do I know any hog farmers from there, is challenging to say the least.

Anyway the fiasco has gone on for 3 or more years now with NO BIRD.  The
"Teams" have gone to North Carolina woods to no avail.  Then into Florida
and Louisiana and even Texas mature woodlands.  They got fishing shut down
here and logging stopped there and a runway project held up over there.
There was warbling about the "need" for USFWS to
protect "all southern mature woodlands" "just in case". The USFWS had
visions of claiming ownership of all remaining southern woodlands (they
already claimed all the woodlands with "endangered" Red-cockaded
Woodpeckers) in one fell swoop that would dwarf the spotted owl Blitzkrieg
on the west coast.  The Nature Conservancy got assistance and did its famous
arm-twisting and bribing with government supported funding to force
landowners to give them easements to forego any future development.  Cornell
got lots of the loot, excuse me Appropriated Funds, and sent platoons of
"Teams" with kayaks and tape recorders and video cameras (do they still call
them that?) and even, reportedly, night vision equipment.  How much more
than the $14 Million has been spent will never be known.  The vaunted
lemming-like arrival of bird lovers that would replace all the income from
hunting and fishing and trapping and logging across the South never
materialized and thus we arrive at today, 24 August 2007 .

II. 21 August 2007

A University professor (retired) that reads my stuff (yes some read my
things, only a week ago I met a professor that told me he even use some of
my things in class) sent me the following excerpts from an article in
Science magazine.  Attached to it was the following note from a colleague of
his.

NOTE: "The following isn't about waterfowl, per se, but it likely represents
the climax to one of the most sordid tales in modern Ornithology and thus
may be of interest to many readers of your list-serve.   They are excerpts
from an article titled "Gambling on a Ghost Bird", which was published today
in Science."  "It appears that the Editor of Science is trying to make up
for having been duped into publishing the original article about the
"rediscovery" of the IBW.   Most damning is the Jerry Jackson quote wherein
he says that Fitzpatrick ( Director of the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology) tried to "bribe" him to shut-up about his doubts re the
existence of the IBW".

THE EXCERPTS: "To many critics, this is a story of good intentions gone awry
and the power of belief, amplified by secrecy. A top-notch team of
scientists was misled by hope, it seems to them, and buoyed by confidence
that more searching would bring the definitive photo. Fitzpatrick and his
colleagues reject those explanations, defend their objectivity, and say they
have no doubts or regrets. Now, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
begins to assess the efficacy of the searches it funds, most birders and
ornithologists seem resigned that even if an ivorybill was in Arkansas in
2004, the chance to save the species is past. "I want to hope against all
odds," says James Bednarz of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro . "But my
scientific logic says it's deep in the vortex of extinction."
...
But Fitzpatrick decided to press ahead, having great confidence in
Gallagher's sighting. "I have to put my faith in those people able to
separate fact from fiction," he says. He was also convinced that if he
didn't act, the bird would truly go extinct. There had been no previous
exhaustive searches, he points out. Cornell had the tip, the resources, and
the gumption. "Nobody else had the balls to do it," Fitzpatrick says.

He insisted on secrecy--a decision that would later bring the team criticism
for being insular and insufficiently skeptical. Fitzpatrick feared that if
word of the search got out, "the place would become Coney Island with
birders piling in all over the place." Ultimately, some two dozen police
officers were ready to protect the habitat after the announcement, but there
was no onslaught...
...
By February 2005, Fitzpatrick recalls, he realized that "we need to begin to
act as though the Luneau video plus sightings plus sound is going to be
enough."
...
Not long after The New York Times reported the existence of the skeptical
but not-yet-published paper, Jackson says, [science adviser to Secretary
Gale Norton, and former assistant director of the Lab of Ornithology James]
Tate called Jackson on a Saturday night and told him to "back off." Tate
denies that and says he just wanted to discuss Jackson 's criticisms. "My
concern was that the skeptics would destroy our opportunity, destroy that
second chance to get the biological information of what the birds needed,"
Tate says.
...
...The recordings convinced co-authors Richard Prum of Yale University and
Robbins that at least two ivorybills were living in the Big Woods. They
withdrew the paper on 1 August, saying they didn't want to undermine
conservation efforts. (In retrospect, now that it's clear the recordings are
not solid evidence, they regret the move. "I blinked," Prum says.)
...
After another round of rebuttals commenced, Fitzpatrick confronted Jackson
during an August 2006 meeting in South Carolina and asked him not to
publish. Jackson recalls Fitzpatrick heatedly telling him, "You are going to
be independently responsible for the extinction of the ivory-billed
woodpecker because you are preventing me from raising money for
conservation." Shortly thereafter, Fitzpatrick contacted Jackson again and
offered co-authorship on a future paper if Jackson would pull his letter.
"That's not how I operate," Jackson told him. Fitzpatrick says he wanted to
focus on the bird and avoid another unproductive exchange: "It was not my
desire to prolong and underscore resentments and personal disagreements."
...
Fitzpatrick rejects the charge of groupthink, insisting that the team was as
objective as any scientists could be. Both Fitzpatrick and Science's Kennedy
defend the decision to publish, noting that the paper was vetted by peer
reviewers. "We got more than satisfactorily positive reviews," says Kennedy,
who adds that he wasn't fazed by the lack of a clear video. "I thought that
it was very important, even if there was some possibility that this might be
wrong."
...
Fitzpatrick anticipates another year or two of searching at most. "It's just
too expensive," he says, noting that it's become harder to raise money. Even
if the team quits emptyhanded, Lammertink says, it will be difficult to
prove the bird is not there. "It may always remain a question mark."

Whether that uncertainty will haunt Cornell remains to be seen. "In some
people's minds, the failure to find better evidence in the last couple of
years has not been good for the reputation of the Lab of Ornithology," says
Russell Charif of Cornell. That specter doesn't worry Fitzpatrick. "I move
with the actions that I deem appropriate for the possibility that the birds
are there," he says. "And I don't look back."".

III. 24 August 2007


The following just arrived at my desk: "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Release $27M
Draft Recovery Plan for Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Federal wildlife officials say spending more than $27 million to research
the suspected habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker is worth the cost,
despite conflicting views on whether the elusive bird even exists."

IV. Cadaver or Dracula?

Does anyone believe the audacity of spending government funds like this?
Does anyone think that all the easements ("the government might otherwise
'have' to buy it") and land acquisition and promotions and bonuses etc.
spent on A BIRD THAT HAS BEEN EXTINCT FOR OVER 60 YEARS is in any sense
justifiable?  Is anyone surprised at the growing boldness of bureaucrats and
academicians and politicians as they do things like this without any
accountability?  We might as well kiss all our rights and freedoms goodbye.
At what point did we turn over our property and taxes and all authority and
our very homes to these bureaucrats and "scientists" for politicians to hide
behind?  Newsflash to the American public - THE BIRD IS EXTINCT SPENDING
MONEY ON IT AND IMPORTUNING LANDOWNERS AND RURAL COMMUNITIES IS LIKE SPENDING MONEY AND BUILDING GOVERNMENT BASED ON BRONTOSAURUS SIGHTINGS. Bury the bird in sunlight and drive a wooden stake through its heart and shoot it with a silver bullet and cover it in garlic (what did I forget?).

V. Footnote

What really originally set me off on this fiasco is the assumption that lay
beneath it from the get-go. To wit, for 60 plus years dumb southern
(redneck) loggers, farmers, deer hunters, duck hunters, trappers, fishermen,
birdwatchers, mushroom pickers, laborers, rural residents, teachers,
campers, truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, hikers, retirees, etc.,
etc. were all too ignorant and unobservant to have seen, much less spoken of
the presence or sighting of this very large and noisy bird that often feeds
communally when dead trees offer an abundance of insects for food.  They
didn't even see them when most of the trees lost their leaves in winter.
They didn't see or hear them as they sat for hours in blinds watching every
movement or when looking up in a mature tree they were about to fell or as
they gathered their cattle in the early morning or late evening.  No, those
kinds of folks are too ignorant and unobservant.

What it takes is Federal bureaucrats and Yankee (you can't get much more
"northern" than Cornell) scientists and graduate students (in Eddie Bauer
clothes and multi-colored kayaks) and Federal politicians throwing around
dollars like Rockefeller used to throw around dimes and oh, let's not forget
The Nature Conservancy that clipped the funds like a widow clipping her
bonds and last but certainly not least let's not forget those silent
partners in all this the State fish and wildlife bureaucrats who merely
cooperated and no doubt were given funding for their "cooperation" in the
Grand "Partnership".  Where would we and our taxes and freedoms and rights
be without the "Grand Pooh-Bahs"?

If they can do this with an extinct bird, the Republic and us along with it
is doomed.

Jim Beers
24 August 2007

- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others.  Thanks.

- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://jimbeers.blogster.com   (Jim Beers Common Sense)

- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak.  Contact:
jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.
He was stationed in North Dakota , Minnesota , Nebraska , New York City , and
Washington DC .  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western
Pacific and on Adak , Alaska in the Aleutian Islands .  He has worked for the
Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security
Supervisor in Washington , DC .  He testified three times before Congress;
twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60
Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to
expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Centreville ,
Virginia with his wife of many decades.