20 October 2007

This letter responds to the “Draft Recovery Plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)” (Draft Plan) published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) on 22 August 2007. The foremost question that remains inadequately addressed is whether any evidence unequivocally confirms a rediscovery and, therefore, the continued existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. In the absence of irrefutable evidence that the species exists, the Draft Plan gives the appearance of an irresponsible use of resources.

Implementation of the Draft Plan would necessitate heavy expenditure from a limited pool of public funds that would then be unavailable for other high priority conservation needs, including recovery of endangered species known to exist and, therefore, most likely to benefit. Not only would this action appear to violate the Endangered Species Act (1) by incorrectly prioritizing endangered species most likely to benefit, but the scientific evidence cited to justify development and implementation of the Draft Plan does not meet an acceptable level of data integrity.

Contrary to statements in the Draft Plan (2), informed individuals and many in the scientific community find the current evidence insufficient to support the claim that any Ivory-billed Woodpeckers existed as recently as 2004. The Draft Plan gives short shrift to these opinions, which are supported by several independent peer-reviewed scientific papers rejecting the claim. At the same time, the Draft Plan cites no published, peer-reviewed supporting arguments other than those by the original authors, whose intellectual and monetary interests are represented in the same Draft Plan.

To address shortcomings in the Draft Plan, we provide here a summary of the pertinent literature. The “center piece” of data provided by Fitzpatrick et al. (3) is a brief video of poor quality. All published, thorough and independent analyses have concluded that the bird seen in the video cannot be identified as an Ivory-billed Woodpecker (4–6). A response by Fitzpatrick et al. (7) failed to refute the main identification points (see 8–10), and this fact is misrepresented in the Draft Plan. The available audio evidence likewise provides no confirmation. As reported by the proponents themselves, none of the recorded sounds can definitely be attributed to an Ivory-billed Woodpecker (11). Furthermore, an evaluation of these sound data showed that the vast majority of the mechanical sounds could be ascribed to another source: colliding duck wings (12, 13). In sum, every independent, published scientific evaluation contradicts the original claim (14) or offers a much more likely alternative explanation—no evidence confirms the continued existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

Among a number of factual errors and inconsistencies in the Draft Plan is the perplexing omission of published Ivory-billed Woodpecker reports from the Choctawhatchee River in northwest Florida. Despite the claim of the presence of “at least a half dozen pairs and perhaps tens of pairs of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers” in that region (15), no recent Florida records are mentioned in the Draft Plan. This is particularly inexplicable given their publication in 2006 (16) and the expenditure by the Service of about $150,000 for searches in that region (17). Likewise, the Draft Plan barely mentions video, audio, and sight reports from the Pearl River Basin of Louisiana and Mississippi (18). Although not acknowledged in the Draft Plan, the evidence from Florida and the Pearl River Basin is equivalent to and certainly no worse than that from Arkansas. All of these recent claims feature poor-quality video, lack of independent and repeatable sightings, and sound recordings that can be explained by other sources or that remain unidentifiable. The uneven handling of these claims is unexplained and suggests the entire Draft Plan rests on shaky ground, supported by uniformly poor and unacceptable documentation.

Lastly, the Draft Plan overstates the credibility of recent sight reports and does not explain how their merit was evaluated. Thus the Draft Plan inaccurately depicts the current probable status of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, for which even the possibility that any exist is extremely doubtful. The absolute lack of definitive evidence produced during the past 60+ years, as well as the abundance of negative data generated by intensive, systematic, multi-year surveys, should not be dismissed so lightly. Moreover, recent sight reports are not credible or convincing since all involve brief encounters by observers steeped in expectations, all lack reconfirmation of characters thought to have been seen, all include descriptions flawed in significant ways (19), and not one was repeated by independent, let alone experienced or expert, observers immediately or soon after the original report.

This inadequate assessment of sightings highlights a weakness in the decision-making process leading to the development of the Draft Plan. That is, no equitable and objective review of observational evidence exists for threatened and endangered species. For example, although rigorous scrutiny is lacking for current sight reports of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the Service accords these sightings greater importance than it does to similar recent sight reports of the Eskimo Curlew or Bachman’s Warbler, neither of which has received a recovery plan or large monetary commitment (and rightly so). Even though sight records do not constitute independently verifiable evidence, for decades bird records committees have provided critical judgments on the acceptability of such reports for the historical record. We recommend that the Service adopt a mechanism that follows the bird records committee model for evaluating and archiving such reports.

If the Service fails to recognize the value of multiple assessments published in peer-reviewed journals, we recommend that, at a minimum, an independent review panel be established to evaluate the current Ivory-billed Woodpecker data and to publish findings for the Service to consider prior to implementing any aspect of the Draft Plan. By taking this course of action, all parties can acknowledge that a transparent evaluation has been conducted. We recommend that members of the American Ornithologists’ Union North American Check-list Committee and the American Birding Association’s Checklist Committee be considered for such an evaluation. Both bodies are well respected within the ornithological community.

Although the rediscovery and subsequent recovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is everyone’s hope, limited public funds should not be spent on hopeful but unverifiable and poorly documented claims. To continue to insist in this Draft Plan that it is more probable than not that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker exists, despite a growing body of scientific analysis to the contrary, would leave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service open to the charge of proceeding in bad faith.

References and Notes:

1. 1.Section 4 (f)(1) of the Endangered Species Act says: “…the Secretary, in developing and implementing recovery plans, shall, to the maximum extent practicable— (A) give priority to those endangered species or threatened species, without regard to taxonomic classification, that are most likely to benefit from such plans..."
   

2. 2.The Draft Plan says, for example: (p. i) “Perspectives with regard to the need for a plan changed dramatically when evidence supporting the presence of at least one bird in the Bayou de View area of Cache River National Wildlife Refuge became widely known in April 2004.” This assertion is expanded to say that: (p. iii) “Evidence indicating the presence of a small population in central Arkansas exists…(Fitzpatrick et al. 2005);” and (p. 8) “…the 2004 and 2005 encounters in Bayou de View documented by Fitzpatrick et al. (2005) represent the most definitive evidence of the species [sic] existence since the 1940s.” The question is not whether the recent Arkansas reports are the “most” definitive since the 1940s; the question is, are they definitive at all? The answer is no.
   

3. 3.Fitzpatrick, J. W., M. Lammertink, M. D. Luneau, Jr., T. W. Gallagher, B. R. Harrison, G. M. Sparling, K. V. Rosenberg, R. W. Rohrbaugh, E. C. H. Swarthout, P. H. Wrege, S. B. Swarthout, M. S. Dantzker, R. A. Charif, T. R. Barksdale, J. V. Remsen, Jr., S. D. Simon, D. Zollner. 2005. Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) persists in continental North America. Science 308: 1460–1462.
   

4. 4.Jackson, J. A. 2006. Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis): Hope, and the interface of science, conservation, and politics. Auk 123: 1–15.
   

5. 5.Sibley, D. A., L. R. Bevier, M. A. Patten, and C. S. Elphick. 2006. Comment on “Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) persists in continental North America.” Science 311: 1555a.
   

6. 6.Collinson, J. M. 2007. Video analysis of the escape flight of Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus: does the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis persist in continental North America? BMC Biology 5: 8 [online] http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/5/8
   

7. 7.Fitzpatrick J.W., Lammertink M., Luneau M.D. Jr., Gallagher T.W., Rosenberg K.V. 2006. Response to “Comment on ‘Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) persists in continental North America.’” Science 311: 1555b.
   

8. 8.Sibley, D. A., L. R. Bevier, M. A. Patten, and C. S. Elphick. 2007a. Pileated or Ivory-billed Woodpecker? Science 315: 1495–1496.
   

9. 9.Sibley, D. A., L. R. Bevier, M. A. Patten, and C. S. Elphick. 2007b. Your letters: Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Birding 39: 11–16 [figure and caption online] http://www.americanbirding.org/pubs/birding/archives/vol39no4p17w1.pdf
   

10. 10.Bevier, L. R. 2007. Ivory-billed debate. [online] http://web.mac.com/lrbevier/ivorybilled
    

11. 11.Charif, R. A., K. A. Cortopassi, H. K. Figueroa, J. W. Fitzpatrick, K. M. Fristrup, M. Lammertink, M. D. Luneau, Jr., M. E. Powers, K. V. Rosenberg. 2005. Notes and double knocks from Arkansas. Science. 309: 1489.
    

12. 12.Jones, C. D., J. R. Troy, and L. Y. Pomara. 2007. Similarities between Campephilus woodpecker double raps and mechanical sounds produced by duck flocks. Wilson J. Ornithol. 119: 259–262.
    

13. 13.In support of the statement that the vast majority of mechanical sounds (double raps or DRs) can be attributed to duck wing collisions (DWC), Jones et al. 2007 say on page 261: “A treatment of the DWC phenomenon, incorporating our observations but without additional confirmed recordings, was given in the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s 2005–06 final report (Rohrbaugh et al. 2006), where the number of plausible ARU DRs was concurrently reduced from hundreds to 10.”
    

14. 14.We do not consider a decision by the Bird Records Committee of the Arkansas Audubon Society to constitute an independent, published scientific evaluation because no formal publication exists with accompanying reasoning or explanation, as is standard practice for bird records committees, and because review was based on undisclosed evidence (apparently incomplete; see online database accessed 26 September 2007 at http://www.arbirds.org/data/taxwd-wf.htm). This decision was announced online sometime in November 2005 (http://www.arbirds.org/ivory_billed_woodpecker.html), when the committee stated that it had voted to change the status of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas from “extirpated” to “present” based on documentation received 17 June 2005 by Max Parker. Acceptance was not unanimous (see Science 312: 1472, 9 June 2006). The dissenting member, Mike Mlodinow, rejected the record after reading Sibley et al. 2006 (see http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2006/08/mike-mlodinows-rejection-paperwork.html and http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2007/01/not-so-independent.html).
    

15. 15.Hill, G. E. 2007. Ivorybill Hunters, The Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness. Oxford Univ. Press, page 235.
    

16. 16.Hill, G. E., D. J. Mennill, B. W. Rolek, T. L. Hicks, and K. A. Swiston. 2006. Evidence suggesting that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis) exist in Florida. Avian Conservation and Ecology—Écologie et conservation des oiseaux 1(3): 2. [online] http://www.ace-eco.org/vol1/iss3/art2/
    

17. 17.L. Fenwood, Ivory-billed Woodpecker Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Southeast Region, personal communication 31 July 2007 via e-mail to M. B. Robbins.
    

18. 18.Collins, M. 2006–2007. Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Pearl River Basin. [online] http://www.fishcrow.com
    

19. 19.For example, the description and sketches by T. Gallagher and B. Harrison exhibit characters that contradict their identification as an Ivory-billed Woodpecker because they show black wing tips that curve posteriorly, like a Pileated Woodpecker, and show an entirely black dorsum, lacking any white stripes. The proponents cite only supportive characters in this and other sightings and ignore features that reject the identification.