There is a story in the Washington Post this morning about the hunt for our very favorite mythical creature in the whole world. Well, except for mermaids. But the complete waste of time, money and effort hunt for the extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker has expanded into Texas! But they must be planning for success; they brought kayaks again!
Campbell and a pair of companions in similar kayaks have been on a tedious winter-long canvass of Texas' famed Big Thicket, an often impenetrable jungle of swamps choked with thorny vines and prodigious pine and cedar trees, in pursuit of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
The bird, at 20 inches with a nearly three-foot wingspan, is the third-largest woodpecker in the world and the biggest woodpecker north of Mexico.
The first sighting in generations was made by Gene Sparling in Arkansas on Feb. 11, 2004, and has spawned interest across the South. Biologists converged on the Arkansas bayou area of the sighting and subsequently captured a 4-second video of what they said was an ivory-billed. Just this month, however, a Scottish scientist, in a British biology journal article, said identification of the bird from the video couldn't be certain.
The last East Texas sighting of an ivory-billed was more than a century ago _ in 1904.
"There's a lot of doubters out there that this bird does exist," said Campbell, from Emmaus, Pa. "I believe it exists."
It is nice to have something to believe in, isn't it? We suggest switching to a hunt for the Easter Bunny. You could use your kayak and get candy if the hunt is successful, too. Bonus! Seriously, folks, this is starting to border on a Bigfoot fixation at this point. The only "proof" of a sighting is heavily questions and the "sighting" was used to block a Federal project. Occam's Razor says this is a hoax. Go for the Easter Bunny. The chow is better.
Even better is how the people involved in “finding” this bird have used it’s existence to bludgeon the Federal Duck Stamp fund into spending over $2M acquiring land adjacent to the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. One tactic used is the rather shady practice of someone giving a “gift in kind” to one of the nature groups.
How that works is a group will be approached with a gift offer. Instead of taking the cash they ask the benefactor to buy a bit of property and then give the property to the group. Parcels are suggested to the gift giver…and I’m sure it is purely coincidental that they “land lock” larger properties when strung together…in the hopes that neighbors will also sell their property later to the nature group. Said neighbors never being aware until later that a conservation group is acquiring property, because they _don’t buy it_ they are gifted it.
I’m also sure that the fact that both Tim Gallagher and Phillip Hoose were both working on books about the IBW had nothing to dow ith their sightings. /sarc
I don’t know why they are looking in that swamp when yuo can get the woodpecker at our local restaturant. It goes great with mash potatoes and gravy.