Cornell cuts back ivory-billed woodpecker search

The Associated Press

Cornell University will not be sending any full-time researchers this year into the east Arkansas woods to look for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.

Ron Rohrbaugh, project director at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said the university sent a team of six full-time researchers to Arkansas last year. However, the school will send only part-time workers into the Big Woods of Arkansas this year.

The reason, Rohrbaugh said, comes as researchers continue to come up empty when looking for the bird. They haven’t been able to capture a sharp image of its remarkable 30-inch wing span and glossy black and white feathers on still or video camera for other ornithologists who doubt the bird’s rediscovery.

Last year, the laboratory reviewed 2.5 million digital photographs taken in the area, as well as listened to hours of audio recordings. But still, Rohrbaugh said they had nothing concrete — though they managed to cull five possible audio matches.

“You can never prove empirically that something is not there,” Rohrbaugh told Little Rock radio station KUAR. “So, in science, the only thing we can do is to collect our data in a systematic way, which allows us to estimate statistically whether we should have found something by now if it was there.”

If there was a population of just five ivory-billed woodpeckers in eastern Arkansas, Rohrbaugh said researchers had slightly less than a 50-percent chance of detecting one in the amount of area they’ve covered so far.

The Cornell lab, The Nature Conservancy, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas Audubon Society have headed the search and have enlisted other groups to scout potential habitat in other Southern states. Alan Mueller of The Nature Conservancy said researchers have their backs against a wall to prove the bird’s existence.

“This is probably going to be our last year for a full-fledged focused search like this. It is not because we don’t think the bird is there,” Mueller said. “We’re down to really needing to get a picture. That’s our big focus, is to try to get the undisputed photograph so that we can document to everyone’s satisfaction that this bird is out there.”

For more information see Monday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.