UALR Professor discovers that bird is not extinct

Long believed to be extinct, a magnificent bird - the ivory-billed woodpecker - has been rediscovered in the woods of eastern Arkansas, and caught on tape by UALR Professor David Luneau. More than 60 years after the last confirmed sighting of the species in the United States, a research team announced at a Washington news conference that at least one male ivory-bill still survives in vast areas of bottomland forest in east Arkansas. Luneau, an associate professor of electronics and computers in the CyberCollege, has been among a team of scientists who have made seven firm sightings of the bird. He videotaped North Americas largest woodpecker in the big woods of eastern Arkansas near the Cache River and White River national wildlife refuges. Luneau is among a team of 50 experts and field biologists that has collected evidence of the birds existence during an intensive several-year search conducted by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University and The Nature Conservancy. "It is a landmark rediscovery," said Scott Simon, director of The Nature Conservancys Arkansas chapter. "Finding the ivory-bill in Arkansas validates decades of great conservation work and represents an incredible story of hope for the future." Luneau said he thought the best chance to film the elusive bird would be to have a camcorder on at all times. On April 25, he captured four seconds of video footage showing the ivory-billed woodpecker taking off from a trunk of a tree. In January 2001, Luneau helped deploy electronic recording devices to detect woodpeckers in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in southeastern Louisiana. As part of this six-member search team, Luneau spent 30 days attaching listening devices to trees and combing the secluded swamp areas of southern Louisiana. Two years later, he led an expedition of seven searchers to the White River National Wildlife Refuge. "No ivory-bills were found then, but some beautiful trees and some lovely swamp and interesting bark scaling" led them to believe the ivory-billed was nearby, according to Luneau. The ivory-billed woodpecker was known as a bird of beauty and indomitable spirit. The species seemed to vanish after extensive clearing destroyed millions of acres of virgin forest throughout the South between the 1880s and mid-1940s. Although the majestic bird has been sought for decades, until now there was no firm evidence of its existence. To learn more about the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker, click on the link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4622633 to hear a first-person account by National Public Radios Christopher Joyce who accompanied the searchers in their 2001 Louisiana expedition and recent travels in Arkansas. Additional information on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker can be found by clicking here: http://www.ivorybill.org/