At the end of September, an ornithological bombshell 54 years in the making finally dropped: The ivory-billed woodpecker, a symbol of southern biodiversity and the largest woodpecker in the U.S., was to be removed from the endangered species list. The reason? Extinction.
The decision—technically a proposal, as it currently stands—was handed down by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the ivory-bill was one of 23 species named in the delisting. All but one other bird on the chopping block were island species whose populations were wiped out by introduced predators like cats, rats, and snakes, or disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes. It makes the woodpecker’s plight all the more significant; from the end of the Civil War through the Great Depression, the animal’s range was reduced from across the sweeping forests of the Southeast to just a few tracts of land across a couple of states. And now, perhaps, none.
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s September announcement marked the beginning of a 60-day public comment period on the endangered species delistings, during which members of the public are encouraged to submit any evidence to the contrary. The public comment period ended on November 29.
Some ornithologists and members of the public say the announcement was either premature—or long overdue. There hasn’t been a confirmed woodpecker sighting since 1944, though reports of its vocalizations, sightings, and even fuzzy video footage have popped up in the ensuing decades. Some remain committed to the idea that the bird is not yet lost, while others feel it is simply a harbinger of things to come for other species if they are not protected from human development and unchecked climate change.
Debate about the bird’s existence reached a fever pitch in the mid-2000s, but it has remained at a simmer ever since.“There is just not this much heat around any other species that’s on the edge of extinction,” said Hannah Hunter, a geographer at Queen’s University in Canada. “Why is that? I think part of it is to do with the people who have been involved in this kind of in-between-ness of the ivory-bill. … These are some of the most credible people in the field.”