Ivory-billed woodpecker officially declared extinct, along with 22 other species
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/
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.
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My grandmother spotted him in the side yard and called us out to see. That is one sighting I will not forget, he was huge! (Compared to other woodpeckers we'd see) 
I was only about 9 years old and it's stuck with me till now. My mother and both grandmothers were big on birds, whatever I know, I learned from them. This was when we lived in Saratoga, the lot next door did not contain a house then, we called it "the pit" since it was a big hole where the foundation had been dug and it was used to pile branches from other lots where they were building. We kids loved it, we could use it for sliding in the winter, or build forts - and it probably attracted woodpeckers, too.
I remember years ago visiting my mom and happened to be in her backyard and looked over at one of her neighbor's trees and was floored when I actually saw what was a pilated woodpecker clinging to the side of it. You couldn't miss that red crown and the size and coloring of it
Growing up, we would always hear some kind of woodpecker in the neighborhood but never saw them. When I finally saw that one, I was surprised at the size.
When one of my sisters moved to her current house almost 20 years ago (which is not far from where I live), not only did she have pilated woodpeckers, but I saw yet another type that I ID'd as a downy woodpecker (which was much smaller).
I actually watched it making mincemeat out of my niece's old wooden playset and then saw that it discovered my sister's deck rails.
I always assumed that woodpeckers were relatively elusive - I guess because they do hang out in trees pecking for their insect food.
But the downy ones I saw were just so bold and out and about, and they seemed to take advantage of "man made" wooden structures to find food. Why bother with a tree when there are plenty of critters that can bore into what eventually becomes untreated (after years) frames from a wooden swing set. The acrobatics of them pecking on the swing set's cross beams while upside down was astonishing. 
They are a little smaller than robins (I guess to give a size comparison). I guess maybe house finch size.
I recently have had song sparrows visit my back patio the past couple years. I had never encountered them before (am used to all sorts of other sparrows - mainly house sparrows).
I never realized a bird so small could be so loud. This past spring, my male "visitor" managed to not only start singing before the robins early in the morning, but went most of the rest of the morning and then returned to sing until after the sun went down (right around breeding season). Whenever I went out on the patio, he would confront me too.
Last year, I had a pair build a nest in one of my potted tropical plants (a stephanotis) and before I brought that in for fall, I had to remove the nest (it was empty after the babies hatched).
As a city girl, I know the past 20 years I have seen so many different types of birds that I never saw growing up in this same area. Agree with doing calls at them too. They definitely take notice.
And regarding the woodpecker sounds, for several years, I couldn't figure out what the heck was making a literal "tropical jungle" sound in the trees at my sister's house (the stand of trees was at the bottom of the hill in her yard along a creek) and finally confirmed that it was a pilated woodpecker. 
But Woody's singing was more "melodious".
that I never saw in the city. But then a magical thing happened - the city started adding more habitat conducive to them and I would say over the past 20 years, I have seen an amazing variety including some as previously elusive here as a ruby-throated hummingbird.
My first hummer experience was a almost 2000 miles away in Colorado on a work trip. Looking it up, since we were staying at a facility at 8,200 ft, I think they were broad-tailed ones. There were literally hundreds at the dozens of feeders that were put up around the place. Fast forward 20 years and I finally saw my own local ones - a single ruby-throated hummer that found one of my plants in 2004, and ever since I have put up feeders for them and planted some of their favorite plants.
Add birds like red-tailed and Cooper's hawks, house finches, a pair of juvenile American Kestels that were perched outside on one of the parapets at my former work building, and a couple years ago, I even ID'd a female Eastern towhee on my patio. I was like - "What the heck is this bird scratching through some fallen leaves on my patio like a chicken???"
And during a vacation up to Niagara Falls (on the Canadian side) back in 2015, after hearing about them all my life, I saw my first red-winged blackbirds. There were hundreds there.
Downys are basically "the seagulls of the woodpecker world".
Down the road from Kings Canyon./Sequoia National Parks.
They will make swiss cheese out of any kind of wood structure to hide their vast collection of acorns. My little old farmhouse, and huge garage, were both wooden. There were whole sections of pecker wood. I finally got the rest of my stuff shipped here, after years in storage out there. Some of it was chock full of acorns.
They are protected (don't know what variety they were), but people shoot them anyway because of the damage they cause. The fate of the Ivory-Billed is very sad, however. Doesn't sound like they ever harmed anything, but we killed them off anyway.
and have been sitting out on the deck while a couple would fly over and start pecking. The deck was there when she moved in (built by the previous owner who also used indoor type wood banister sections for the rails).
Every couple years, my sis would have a guy pressure wash and reseal the deck and rails, but at some point between the treatments, there were carpenter bees that also discovered the wood rails and posts, drilled perfect circular holes in them, and deposited an egg, and that seemed to become a big flashing neon sign for woodpeckers to come get some fast food.
I found this video of a pilated going right after a carpenter-bee ridden rail -
I haven't actually been there to see any pilated do that to her deck (they seem to prefer to be more hidden) although I've seen one on her neighbor's old (dying) front yard dogwood tree. She just had new neighbors move in over the summer in that house and those neighbors have spent the past month removing many of the dead or dying trees... and even had a beekeeper come and get a giant honey bee hive out of an old dying tree on the property line that I think was ID'd as an Ash).
My sister's yard is a literal zoo of creatures (which I suppose is great for conservation and naturalization) and this is right near the city line of Philly.
live bugs! It's their caviar. 
Last edited Wed Sep 29, 2021, 09:29 AM - Edit history (1)
I remember some reports of rare sightings and recordings of its call since the 1970s up to about
the 2000s but I guess the population was to small to keep the species going and it needed old
growth bottom or swamp land forests.
One more rivet is gone.
The "rivet-popper" hypothesis put forth by Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife Anne H. Ehrlich compares each species forming part of an ecosystem with a rivet on the airplane (represented by the ecosystem). The progressive loss of species mirrors the progressive loss of rivets from the plane, weakening it till it is no longer sustainable and crashes.
They were very beautiful. 
