Ivory-billed woodpecker officially declared extinct, along with 22 other species [View all]

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Source: Washington Post


The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of nearly two dozen species of animals and plants that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has officially declared extinct. (Auscape/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)


The “Lord God Bird” is dead. The ivory-billed woodpecker, a ghostly bird whose long-rumored survival in the bottomland swamps of the South has haunted seekers for generations, will be officially declared extinct by U.S. officials after years of futile efforts to save it. It earned is nickname because it was so big and so beautiful those blessed to spot it blurted out the Lord’s name. Even the scientist who wrote the obit cried.

“This is not an easy thing,” said Amy Trahan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who reviewed the evidence and wrote the report concluding the ivory bill “no longer exists.” “Nobody wants to be a part of that,” she added, choking up in a Zoom interview. “Just having to write those words was quite difficult. It took me awhile.” The Fish and Wildlife Service proposal Wednesday to take 23 animals and plants off the endangered species list — because none can be found in the wild — exposes what scientists say is an accelerating rate of extinction worldwide.

A million plants and animals are in danger of disappearing, many within decades. The newly extinct species are the casualties of climate change and habitat destruction, dying out sooner than any new protections can save them. The species pushed over the brink include 10 types of birds and bats found only on Pacific islands, as well as eight types of freshwater mussels that once inhabited riverbeds from Illinois to Georgia. The best available science suggests these creatures are no longer swimming, scampering or soaring on this planet, obliterating the need for any federal protection.

With a range that once spanned from the coastal plains of North Carolina to the bayous of East Texas, the ivory-billed woodpecker’s numbers suffered their most precipitous drop during the 1800s. Marksmen gunned them down for private collectors and hat makers, while loggers felled the old-growth stands where the birds roosted and foraged for grub. “The fact that this bird is so critically endangered has been true since the 1890s, and it’s fundamentally a consequence of the fact that we cut down every last trace of the virgin forest of the southeastern U.S.,” said John W. Fitzpatrick, director emeritus of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We took all that away.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/29/endangered-species-ivory-billed-woodpecker/

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The one thing to note regarding the disposition of various species is that we are also continually finding new ones never "seen" (or at least never recorded) before, so the awareness of habitat and climate change should help to underscore taking action for those we know about that are beneficial to the ecosystem.

The American Alligator was once hunted almost to extinction for its hide, and is now almost a nuisance animal for obvious reasons (due to the rapid development of housing in Florida in its habitat).

Of course the more obvious one being carefully preserved is the Bald Eagle, which took over 60 years to get it to a recovered stage.

The California Condor is another under a preservation program.

If California needs anything, I can send them our turkey vultures.



If one wants to talk about how well the banning of DDT and other pesticides that were killing birds, has done in preservation, I know I grew here in Philly assuming that birds like "vultures" only existed "out west" like in the cartoons, flying in circles over barren deserts... Until I traveled up to north Jersey for a work trip almost 30 years ago and literally saw dozens of what I would discover were "turkey vultures" that were perching and pooping all over the office park where I had visited. I had never seen anything so big, scary and ugly like that and not in a zoo. Now they are all over the Philly area and the rim suburbs feasting on road kill. Seeing a 3 foot tall hulking bird a few feet away is pretty shocking to say the least.