By Celeste Silling
In 2005, the Secretary of the Interior made the announcement that an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, had been seen in eastern Arkansas. This announcement thrilled the birding community, leading to numerous studies, excursions, dubious sightings, and articles all centered around it. Why? Because the Ivory-billed Woodpecker had been “extinct” for the past 60 years.
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker was the largest woodpecker in North America, larger even than the Pileated Woodpeckers we see here on the Upper Texas Coast. The Ivory-bills lived in old-growth forests in the American South and in Cuba. Unfortunately, widespread destruction and degradation of these forests began to directly affect the birds in the 1800s, with only a small portion of the population surviving into the 1900s. Those dwindling numbers disappeared entirely in the 1940s and the species went entirely unseen until the early 2000s.
The 2005 rediscovery announcement led researchers to wonder if the species had managed to survive in areas outside of Arkansas as well. In Texas, the corridors of the Trinity, Neches, and Sabine Rivers were all suitable habitat for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and were within its historic range. Gulf Coast Bird Observatory decided to investigate this possibility, devoting two years to the study beginning in 2007.
I didn’t work at Gulf Coast Bird Observatory in 2007, but I do now, and it is clear in our documentation that this research was truly exciting. “Rediscovering” an extinct species would be a huge boon for the area and for the field of wildlife conservation in general. John Arvin, GCBO’s Research Coordinator at the time, wrote in his proposal, “Discovery of a relict population of Campephilus principalis within its historic range in southeastern Texas will have a profound impact on the management of the bottomland forests of southeastern Texas. Collateral positive economic impacts will also accrue to the region, much of which is economically depressed.”
GCBO’s search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker consisted of ground-search teams going out into randomly chosen habitats within the bird’s historic range. The teams walked, drove, and kayaked 500 acre “patches” within the range, each repeated at least three times. During these surveys, they played Ivory-billed Woodpecker calls, which had been recorded before the extinction, to lure out any remaining birds. They also placed video and audio recording devises in areas of interest, such as tree cavities. In total, the team surveyed 36 patches along the Neches Corridor, and 38 along the Trinity corridor.
During the surveys, there were several heartening instances of black and white woodpeckers spotted from afar, or distant loud knocks on trees. But each of these was either proven to be a Pileated Woodpecker or unproven to be an Ivory-billed. In his final report, Arvin wrote, “Our failure to find other suggestive evidence that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers exist in the areas searched leads us to conclude that there probably is not a remnant population of the species in southeastern Texas.”
John Arvin passed away in 2023. The memorial plaque at GCBO recalls him as a great friend and a passionate birder, and specifically mentions his work on the Texas Ivory-billed Woodpecker project.
Now, despite many extensive searches and studies, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has not been reliably documented since that announcement in 2005. The IUCN lists it as Critically Endangered and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists it as Federally Endangered. In my opinion, Cornell’s All About Birds website sums it up perfectly as “probably extinct.”
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has made it’s mark on birders and conservationists. The widespread search to rediscover the species shows how deeply we wanted this bird to be alive and how much the world can miss a single species. If nothing else, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker serves as a reminder that each animal is precious and every habitat needs to be protected.
Photo: An Ivory-billed Woodpecker pair outside their nesting cavity.
Credit: Arthur A. Allen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
