It is not unlikely that there are still a few Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Cuba. If so, this is due to the low level of habitat destruction found in a communist dictatorship more than any other factor. This is the direct result of impoverished citizens and the failure of such governments to utilize natural resources as will free citizens that own property. Think about this. While the US has built and maintained a society with the highest level of human affluence known to any society throughout history; habitat, countryside, the environment, and the ecosystem have changed dramatically and they still change at a rapid pace as we cut trees, grow food, build homes, etc. Simultaneously, we have the strongest property rights protections (until Kelo v New London?) and the most abundant, sustainable, and widely available (to citizens) hunting, fishing, trapping, and natural resource use levels of any other nation. This in spite of environmental and animal rights drives to eliminate all these things. Couple all this with our knowledge and experience regarding environmental management and resource use and we are at a level of capability that allows all these things to proceed while we provide simultaneously for a diverse and healthy environment. In short, we can today provide even for woodpeckers that seem to be unable to adapt to the changing world of the 21st century. The thing to focus on here is not how we can be more like Cubans. The emphasis should be, if this discovery is legitimate (truly an American Ivory-bill), how do we maintain the American dream and the Woodpecker?

The likelihood of this lone bird being a sole descendant from others that remained hidden in the American south for 60 years while other woodpeckers like the Endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker were studied intensively and the woodlands entertained a wide spectrum of regular visitors and users is remote, to say the least. When the implications of this "discovery" - more Federal, State, and Non-profit land acquisition and easement; increased Federal and State budgets, workforces, and authority; University grant bonanzas for the foreseeable future; restrictions on hunting (they "look like a Pintail"), spring turkey season coincides with nesting, deer hunters and dogs are disturbance factors, squirrel hunters shoot into trees, etc.), fishing (boats and fishing disturb nesting birds), logging (they need "virgin" forests), farming (those fields should go back to forests to provide a "corridor" for the birds), rural communities (where are the hunters?, no one can fish here anymore, how come the sawmill closed down?, Bill was arrested for cutting down that oak for firewood, etc.); funding, tax, and donation bonanzas for environmental and animal rights radicals to develop the level of clout for their agendas in the south that they have achieved in the west; and temptations for every politician to grandstand support for unimaginable (today) government programs to "save" the Woodpecker - this is not an unfair question. For all these reasons and more, asking about the validity of this Ivory-billed Woodpecker discovery involves far more than the status of a bird formerly believed to be extinct.

The cumulative effects of extinctions throughout the world to date have resulted in DIFFERENT, neither better or worse, mixes of plant and animal species. Sure I wish there were still buffalo wandering around so I could shoot one occasionally and feed my family with it but that is neither possible nor desirable if we are to live in a nation of free citizens where property is guaranteed and we produce a super-abundance of food year after year. The same thing goes for those who would cripple this country for wolves or spotted owls or jumping mice or snail darters. So considering the shameful 35-year history of the Endangered Species Act and current trends exemplified by Kelo v New London the question about where this bird came from is not only legitimate, it is imperative.

Only "one" bird after two years of looking and checking by a battalion of experts and volunteers and every company that wants an endorsement for their product and only "ONE" bird? Something is fishy.

Given the history of the ruthlessness of those that stand to profit from this and the level of financial and citizen control (power) profit involved, even an Aruban investigator would smell a rodent.

Finally, given the T-shirts and media coverage and managed public education and information control by the Universities, bureaucrats and non-profits; hopefully the westerner (that wrote about how to check the origin of the bird forensically) and the Canadian that wrote me yesterday (about my mistaken point of the Ivory-bill having only 3 instead of 4 toes) and I are not the only ones considering the importance of this matter.

Jim Beers
29 June 2005