Discovery
Responding to the dramatic rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker at the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns recently announced a multi year, multi million dollar partnership effort to aid the rare bird's survival. The bird has been thought to be extinct in the United States for more than 60 years.

“This is a rare second chance to preserve through cooperative conservation what was once thought lost forever,” Secretary Norton said.

The Interior Department, along with the Department of Agriculture (USDA), has proposed that more than $10 million in federal funds be committed to protect the bird. This amount would supplement $10 million already committed to research and habitat protection efforts by private sector groups and citizens, an amount expected to continue to grow as news of the rediscovery spreads. Federal funds will be used for research and monitoring, recovery planning and public education. In addition, the funds will be used to enhance law enforcement and conserve habitat through conservation easements, safe harbor agreements and conservation reserves.

“Finding a species once thought extinct is a rare and exciting event, and the USDA is pleased to be a partner in the effort to protect ivory-billed woodpeckers,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said. “At the same time, we understand that habitat conservation can impact landowners. That's why we're going to reach out to work cooperatively with stakeholders so we can all share in the joy of this discovery.”

The action by Secretary Norton and Secretary Johanns came in response to news from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Nature Conservancy and others that had collected primary and secondary evidence of the bird's existence in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. The primary evidence consists of video footage, while the secondary evidence consists of seven eye witness sightings and audio evidence of the ivory-billed woodpecker. In addition, recordings of the distinctive double rap of the bird are still under analysis. After conducting its own peer reviews of the evidence, the journal Science is now publishing these findings.

The recovery plan will adjust to emerging knowledge of these rare birds, their activities and habitat needs. Priority will be placed on developing a long term plan that integrates federal, state, local and private resources. Recovery efforts will utilize partnerships, safe harbor agreements, easements and land purchases from willing sellers.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was last seen at the following locations and following dates in Mississippi: Sharkey County (1888), Yazoo County (1890), Bolivar County (1893), Monroe County (1885), Clay County (1885), Hancock County (1885), Harrison County (1893) and Jackson County (1921). Areas where the ivory-billed has the greatest potential to be found today are: areas along the Mississippi River in Bolivar County, the South Delta, the Mississippi River between Vicksburg and Fort Adams, the Buttahatchie River, the lower Pearl River and the Pascagoula River.

Biology
The ivory-billed woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, is the largest woodpecker found in North America and is the second largest woodpecker in the world. It is about the size of a crow, measuring from 19 to 21 inches in length and weighing around one pound, with short legs and feet ending in large, curved claws. The adult birds are a shiny blue black in color.

Ivory-billed woodpeckers perched (left) and flying (right). Revised and redrawn from The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker by James Tanner.

On adult males, the sides and back of the crest are bright red with a white stripe on the side of the head that extends from below the eye down the side of the neck and onto its back. A broad white “shield” is created by white on the inner primaries and all secondaries when the wings are folded over it's back, and white nasal tufts at the base of it's long, broad, and heavy ivory white bill that is quite chisel shaped at the tip in mature individuals. Like all woodpeckers, it has a long, mobile, hard tipped, barbed tongue. The underparts are black to brownish black, except the undersurface of the wings which are black and white. The eyes are a clear lemon yellow color and the legs and feet are light gray. Females are similar to males but slightly smaller with the crest being entirely black and somewhat longer and often slightly up curved. Juveniles are similar to adults of each sex but somewhat browner and with somewhat rounded tip to bill and shorter crest. Its drum is a single or double rap, and its alarm call, a kent or hant, sounds like a toy trumpet repeated in a series or as a double note.

The ivory-billed woodpecker feeds mainly on the larvae of wood boring beetles, but also eats seeds, fruit and other insects. The bird uses its enormous white bill to hammer, wedge and peel the bark off dead trees to find the insects. Surprisingly, these birds need about ten square miles per pair so they can find enough food to feed their young and themselves. Hence, they occur at low densities even in healthy populations. The more common pileated woodpecker may compete for food with this species.

The ivory-billed woodpecker is thought to pair for life. Pairs are also known to travel together. These paired birds will mate every year between January and May. Before they have their young, they excavate a nest in a dead or partially dead tree about 8 15 m. up from the ground. Usually three eggs are laid and incubated for 3 to 5 weeks. Both parents sit on the eggs and are involved in taking care of the chicks, with the male taking sole responsibility at night. They feed the chicks for months. About 5 weeks after the young are born, they learn to fly. Even after the young are able to fly, the parents will continue feeding them for another 2 months. The whole family will eventually split up in late fall or early winter.

The ivory-billed woodpecker can be distinguished from the more common pileated woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, by its larger size, ivory white bill and largely distinctive white wing. The pileated woodepecker has a crest and white stripes on the neck but lacks the large white inner wing. The pileated woodpecker's bill is usually dark and is much smaller and more pointed than the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Ivory-bills apparently were rarely affected by predators or by competition with any other species. There was never any indication of disease or parasites.

Habitat
Ivory-billed woodpeckers are known to prefer old growth, hardwood forests, with large amounts of dead trees and decaying wood, often in swampy ground. Prior to the Civil War, much of the southern United States was covered in vast tracts of virgin hardwood forests that were suitable as habitat for the bird.

Settlement and civilization carried the axe and saw into the forests and, as trees were cut for the need for lumber and other wood products, as well as conversion to agriculture, the forests were destroyed and the ivory-bill was pushed into smaller and more fragmented pieces of forest land. This loss of habitat certainly pushed this magnificent bird of the forest toward extinction.

The destruction of the ivory-billed woodpecker's habitat continued unabated through the 1940s until there was no more old growth timber left to cut. Gone were millions of acres of the great bottomland forests that once blanketed the South and the ivory-bill was forced into smaller and more fragmented pieces of forest land.

Unlike many other species of woodpecker that thrive in mature bottomlands, but also do quite well in younger second growth forests, the ivory-bill could not make this adjustment because of the lack of dead and decaying trees. When the old growth bottomland forests were extensively harvested to meet demands for forest products, the ivory-bill was deprived of its life source.

This happened because certain conditions usually found only in these kinds of forests were changed. Virgin or primitive forests contain many old trees which, because of their age, are gradually and constantly weakening and dying. Dead limbs and branches and standing trunks are abundantly present in all stages of decay, from hardwoods with the bark still tight to the wood that is completely rotten. This abundance and variety of dead wood present ideal conditions for the development of wood-boring insect larvae, which are the food of woodpeckers, and several kinds of woodpeckers are commonly found in this type of forest.

A major part of that life source was a food supply that was rather restricted. While ivory-bills sometimes ate various fruits and nuts, like most woodpeckers they thrived on insects (its scientific name, Campephilus principalis, means “the principal lover of grubs”).

However, unlike other woodpeckers that drill into trees to obtain burrowing insects in sections of dead or diseased heartwood, the ivory-bill depends on insects that live just under the bark of recently dead and dying “upright” trees. Rather than drilling into these trees, they stripped the bark away to expose their food source. Standing dead trees of mature size are not a common item in young, second growth forest stands. Indeed, such trees are only relatively abundant in expansive stands of older growth. As our old growth bottomland forests were depleted, so was the ivory-bill's primary food supply.

Logging the virgin forests removed most of the large, old trees that, indirectly, supply food to woodpeckers. Young trees spring up to take the empty places; but young trees grow rapidly, are healthy and usually contain little dead wood.

Even in excessively wet areas, a tree will grow for about 150 years before it is “old,” so it would take many years of uninterrupted growth for a forest once logged to become ideal woodpecker habitat again.

There is further evidence that food supply is the biggest factor for ivory-bills. Several times, in various parts of Florida, many trees have been killed by fire, storms or other causes. Ivory-bills have appeared in these places and fed upon these trees as long as the borers beneath the bark are common, and then they disappeared or moved elsewhere. The same thing happened in Louisiana and other areas where their food was temporarily in abundance.

The fad of collecting birds was another factor contributing to the demise of the ivory-bill once it became rare. Bird collectors, including many prominent ornithologists, became experts at targeting threatened birds to add to their collections.

Recovery
The recovery plan for the woodpecker, which has not yet been developed, will adjust to emerging knowledge of these rare birds, their activities and habitat needs. Priority will be placed on developing a long-term plan that integrates federal, state, local and private resources. Overall recovery efforts will utilize partnerships, safe harbor agreements, easements and land purchases from willing sellers.

The recovery plan should address two major concerns of the ivory-billed woodpecker. In the short-term, an additional food supply will increase the carrying capacity for the woodpecker on private land and prior enrolled Wetland Reserve and Conservation Reserve Program lands. Tree species such as sweetgum and hackberry will be killed to provide an essential food source.

In the long-term, the protection and restoration of habitat is needed. These forests are also home to many other kinds of birds, including migratory species, and animals, some of them at risk and also in need of protection and conservation.

Most forests in the Southeast are managed by foresters for a timber supply. In such a forest, dead and dying trees are typically removed, old trees cut to make way for young and growing trees, fires prevented and all possible steps would be taken to increase the yield of timber. Such methods can be improved so that dead wood and old trees are abundant.