Oh, and there are some HIGH-LARIOUS statements in that Accomplishment report:
Tennessee: Possible visual and auditory encounters in January 2006 on federal and private land led to research into the presence of IBWO in Tennessee....About 100 hours was spent in the field conducting transects, kayaking, and sitting, watching, and listening in areas of interest. One
possible single rap was heard by 2 observers.
(I guess a single rap heard by two observers counts as a double rap?)
About 102 hours of additional effort were spent searching and cavity monitoring on the Hatchie River, the Lower Hatchie NWR, and Chickasaw NWR. ... Possible encounters include
single and double raps heard on January 8th and 9th, 2007.
(Obviously Tennessee Ivory-bills have evolved to single-rap. This is part of their evolution to a stealth configuration, which
Don Hendershot has so brilliantly concluded indicates we are dealing with a new species,
Campephilus willowispis. But intrepid searchers are still able to detect that certain something that indicates a
single rap is a possible Ivory-bill, instead of a Pileated, gunshot, hammer/nail, gastrointestinal disturbance, etc.)
Cooperators at the University of Georgia provided a survey design and field protocol for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker search effort that will: (1) allow estimation of occupancy, use, and detection probability for habitats at
two spatial scales... Results from the 2006-07 search season indicated weak relationships between occupancy and habitat and a
very low detection probability.
(Bravo on the jargon about "spatial scales"--
tres scientific. "Very low detection probability" gets my nomination for "understatement of the year"!)
...
One significant obstacle to the recovery of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers is the lack of information about this species' biology and ecology.
(A perhaps more significant obstacle is the inability to find actual birds to recover.)
CONSERVATION PARTNERSHIPS
...
IBW Recovery Initiative ($100,000) Project Status: Ongoing. The Mississippi River Trust is working with a number of partners to restore, through reforestation 900 acres and strive to combine it with a carbon sequestration program, and to enhance 1,100 acres of habitat by injecting Arsenal in primarily sweet gum and sugarberry to increase food supply for the Ivory-billed woodpecker. Project completion expected in 2009.
(Killing trees in one area, which releases carbon, and reforestation in another area, which is sequestering carbon and creating IBWO habitat in about 100 years. Your tax dollars at work!)
Why do you think Cornell called it Elvis? See the lyrics to
Elvis is Everywhere by Mojo Nixon. Very apropos for the Ivory-bill search!
It just keeps getting better! With entertainment like this from the USFWS, who needs anything else? Surely a reality television show is in the offing.