Ivory-billed Woodpecker is Back. Good News, Bad News...

If you have been over to Darn Floor recently, or maybe caught the evening news where it was mentioned, you'd know that the Ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct for over 60 years, has been "re-discovered" in Arkansas.

Well, as Darn Floor put it, this is cool news. I enjoy watching birds, and see plenty out in the woods on the job every day. Once in a while we see the look-alike Pileated woodpecker flying around - cool. So, this is good news to know that this particular critter is still out there.

Nonetheless, a split-second after my "that's cool" reaction started, my "Oh no..." reaction set in. Why? Well, Ivory-billed woodpeckers require large trees to nest in, and feed on insects under the bark of dead and dying trees. Why did they go "extinct"? Because of logging, silly. Even though they were heavily hunted by museums for their collections because it was naturally so rare, logging is still blamed as the cause of extinction.

That's what made me go "uh-oh".

The bird has been found in the "Big Woods" of Arkansas, which is apparently under a number of ownerships. The Nature Conservancy would like to bring this forest back to its primeval state

"The ivory-bill tells us that we could actually bring this system back to that primeval forest here in the heartland of North America,” said Fitzpatrick, who is also a member of The Nature Conservancy’s board of governors.

In addition, they are looking to expand the number of acres under protection

Fortunately, much of the land needed to create a vast corridor of forested wetlands is already in public ownership. More than 300,000 acres are protected in Arkansas in public reserves. To add to that acreage, the Conservancy is identifying private individuals and corporations that own important forest patches and enlisting their support in protecting the Big Woods. The Conservancy will use a variety of protection techniques, including land acquisition, conservation easements, ecotourism ventures, and the implementation of sustainable agriculture and sustainable forestry. The Conservancy is planting trees and encouraging public agencies and private landowners to reforest their property as well.

These two paragraphs can also be read as "take as much land out of timber production as possible". Nonetheless, here are the two key phrases that caught my attention: "primeval forest " and "sustainable forestry".

Environmentalists want the Nicolet-Chequamagon National Forest here in northern Wisconsin to be restored to its "pre-settlement condition", which basically translates to cutting less and less timber off the forest (makes sense, right? Before the area was settled, no one was around to cut it...). I image the same holds true when you want to return a forest to its "primeval state".

As far as "sustainable forestry" goes, I am convinced it means whatever the environmentalists want it to mean. Sustainable Forestry for the Big Woods will mean as little cutting as possible to still call it forestry, increasing the stocking of large trees and leaving them to die in the woods, and huge roadless areas. I fear for any large forest-land holder near the Big Woods area that wants to go in and cut his land; if they even think the Ivory-billed woodpecker may be on his land, I am sure lawsuits would be right around the corner to prohibit him from cutting. What's that you say? Private land! - he can cut if he wants to! Well, with lawyers and judges the way they are, if it's for the "good of the country" I'm sure they will figure out a way to stop it.

So, in spite of the fact that this bird has managed to survive on its own over all these years, environmentalists now have a hard-hitting club to wield when pushing for more and more restrictions on the rational use of our forest resources, particularly on public land, down South.

And on a side note, if a bird this big can go undetected for 60 years, then how can they ever claim with credibility that anything is in danger of extinction/has gone extinct?! One example that comes to mind is some fly in California whose "only known breeding grounds are the Delhi sand dunes" near Los Angeles. This fly halted development projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars simply because it was the only place entomologists had found it. They said the fly could go extinct if the project were to continue. I don't know what eventually came of this issue, but for all we know, the darn fly is found in sand dunes all across the southwest....