Giving up the ghost bird?

In February, 2004, a lone kayaker paddling through an Arkansas swamp spotted a magnificent black and white bird. According to the kayaker, it was an Ivory-billed woodpecker, referred to as the “Lord God Bird” because that’s what everyone says when they see it: “Lord God!” The woodpecker had been considered extinct in the U.S. and the sighting was the first in decades. It triggered a fascinating and controversial quest to verify the existence of the ghostly species.

According to a February 10, 2010, report in Nature News (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100210/full/463718a.html?s=news_rss), the woodpecker remains a spectre, while the controversy is as real as ever:

"After five years of fruitless searching, hopes of saving the species have faded. 'We don't believe a recoverable population of ivory-billed woodpeckers exists,' says Ron Rohrbaugh, a conservation biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who headed the original search team."

Scott Crocker, in his brilliant 2009 documentary film Ghost Bird, tells the fascinating story of the reaction to the sighting and the controversial attempts to verify the Ivory-bill's existence. For my review of the film, see my May, 2009, post: http://chrissasaki.blogspot.com/2009/05/ghost-bird-hot-docs-2009.html

For more about Crocker's film: http://www.ghostbirdmovie.com