Back From the Dead
The ivory-billed woodpecker, a truly remarkable bird that was believed to have gone extinct 60 years ago, has been sighted again in the the Big Woods region of Arkansas. According to John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, it became known as the Lord God bird because people seeing it would exclaim "Lord God, look at that bird."
It's heartening to get a second chance at conserving a species, even though in most cases we only get one. According to a 2002 report by the Natural Heritage Program, many species in the Northwest are teetering on the brink. Here's a rundown of the most endangered species in the region:
| Species Extinct | Mammals At-risk | Birds At-risk |
Alaska | 2 | 14.6% | 5.6% |
California | 53 | 16.4% | 4.8% |
Idaho | 1 | 1.0% | 0.7% |
Montana | 3 | 1.9% | 1.8% |
Oregon | 12 | 4.0% | 2.4% |
Washington | 3 | 7.1% | 3.0% |
UPDATE: A truly first rate article in the New York Times. Here's the crux:
It wasn't a miracle. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't simply the resilience of nature, although that helped. The reason for the astonishing re-emergence of a mysterious bird is as mundane as can be. It is habitat preservation, achieved by hard, tedious work, like lobbying, legislating and fund-raising.
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