Submitted on April 8, 2005
Accepted on April 27, 2005
Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Persists in Continental North America
John W. Fitzpatrick 1*,
Martjan Lammertink 2,
M. David Luneau Jr.3,
Tim W. Gallagher 1,
Bobby R. Harrison 4,
Gene M. Sparling 5,
Kenneth V. Rosenberg 1,
Ronald W. Rohrbaugh 1,
Elliott C. H. Swarthout 1,
Peter H. Wrege 1,
Sara Barker Swarthout 1,
Marc S. Dantzker 1,
Russell A. Charif 1,
Timothy R. Barksdale 6,
J. V. Remsen Jr.7,
Scott D. Simon 8,
Douglas Zollner 8
1 Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
2 Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA. ; Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Mauritskade 61, 1092 AD Amsterdam, Netherlands.
3 Department of Engineering Technology and Department of Information Technology, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, AR 72204, USA.
4 Department of Communications, Oakwood College, Huntsville, AL 35896, USA.
5 107 Stillmeadow Lane, Hot Springs, AR 71913, USA.
6 Birdman Productions, Post Office Box 1124, 65 Mountain View Drive, Choteau, MT 59422, USA.
7 Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
8 The Nature Conservancy, Arkansas Chapter, 601 North University Avenue, Little Rock, AR 72205, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
John W. Fitzpatrick , E-mail: jwf7{at}cornell.edu
Wildlife scientists confirmed on Thursday that a bird long thought extinct, the , has been found in Arkansas. The remarkable birds have a 30-inch wingspan and stand nearly 20 inches high.

The birds inhabited a wide swath of American bottomlands and mountain pine forests until the latter part of the 1800s. They require a large feeding ground, and it is thought the expansion of towns and cities closed off their domain. They went extinct in Cuba during the same period. Ornithologists say each mating pair of Ivory-billed woodpeckers needs three square miles of forest to survive. There were thought to be only 22 of them left in 1938.

There have been several independent sightings of the bird in Arkansas over the last year, and even a videotape. In an effort to support the birds, the  Lab of Ornithology, , and other groups have joined to form the Big Woods Conservation Partnership to conserve 200,000 acres of forest habitat and rivers in the area during the next 10 years.

John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology told the Associated Press, "the bird captured on video is clearly an ivory-billed woodpecker. Amazingly, America may have another chance to protect the future of this spectacular bird and the awesome forests in which it lives."  

The story premiered Thursday in the online version of Science magazine.