$50,000 offered for bird photo
Posted on Saturday, November 8, 2008
A private donor has offered $ 50, 000 to anyone who presents photographic proof of the ivory-billed woodpecker, hoping to rekindle enthusiasm for the bird reportedly spotted in the state in 2004.
The Nature Conservancy and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission had previously offered a $ 10, 000 reward for a sighting with proof.
“We’re hoping this will get the hunters and fishermen out there to report what they see,” said Allan Mueller, the avian conservation project manager for the Arkansas chapter of the Nature Conservancy.
Mueller has looked for the elusive winged creature nearly every weekend for the past four years, he said. He’s trudged through the swampy lands of Big Woods, a wildlife area near Brinkley and Clarendon fed by the Cache River.
The ivory-billed woodpecker thrived in the early 1900 s, but because of reduced habitat and hunting, the bird diminished in numbers. As it became rare, collectors began paying top dollar for the bird, eliminating even more of the species, Mueller said.
“They loved it to death,” he said.
The woodpecker last was spotted in 1944 — until early 2004, when a videotaped image of a blurred bird that could have been the ivory-billed surfaced.
That brought bird watchers to Arkansas in droves and fed a frenzied market with books, documentaries and souvenirs.
“Initially, that helped us,” said Brinkley Mayor Barbara Skouras. “We have a 2-percent hamburger and hotel tax that helped get an awful lot of money back then. But then the interest began waning. When they didn’t find the bird, they didn’t come back.”
Mueller hopes the added reward, offered by a person who wished not to be named, could bring more interest to the area.
“We’ve had a lot of spottings that were, ‘Gee, that could have been it, ’” he said. “They were done in good faith, but they may have been mistaken. It’s imperative to get photographic proof. That’s what we have to get to get that same [reaction ] as we did in 2004.”
Ornithologists with Cornell University are expected to begin their annual search for the bird on Dec. 1. Officials with the Game and Fish Commission and the Arkansas Audubon Society will also traverse the sloughs and woods of the area, Mueller said.
Mueller also stressed that if the woodpecker is found, that area won’t be closed because of the bird’s presence. “No private land has been condemned to protect this species, and there is no intention of doing so,” he said.
“I’ve no doubt it’s out there,” he said of the possibility that the ivory-billed woodpecker still lives in Arkansas. “It’s like looking for a flying needle in a flooded haystack. It’s there, but it just doesn’t want to be found.”
Skouras said she’s ready for an onslaught of visitors if the bird is spotted again, but she’s skeptical of the bird’s long-term existence.
“They keep talking about ‘ it’ when they talk about the bird,” she said. “They always talk about one bird. It takes two to make new ivory-bills.
“ I hope it’s there,” she said. “It would put Brinkley on the map.”
Anyone with video or photographic proof of the ivorybilled woodpecker is asked to call Mueller at the Nature Conservancy in Little Rock at (501 ) 614-5092.
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