What Happened to Ivory-billed Woodpeckers?
The decline of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is largely attributable to habitat loss: the lumber industry decimated the old growth hardwoods of the Southeast by the 1930s leaving only isolated patches of good habitat for the birds. A few such patches remain today, notably in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, and in the Florida panhandle. Pressure on the birds also came from feather collectors and from bird enthusiasts who deliberately and unthinkingly shot them as collector’s items. In a stunningly illogical desire to have their own specimen, birders hunted the woodpeckers more avidly the rarer they became. document.getElementById(‘adsense_placeholder_2’).innerHTML = document.getElementById(‘adsense_ad_2_hidden’).innerHTML; The Difficulty of Confirming that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Still Exists Since the 2004 sighting in Arkansas, both scientists and citizen birders have joined in the search for confirmation, while others find the evidence unconvincing and consider
