A Science Scandal that Culminated in Declaring the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) Extinct

Abstract

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) is an ultra-elusive bird that has repeatedly been feared extinct only to be rediscovered during the past hundred years. An article that was featured on the cover of Science in 2005 announced the most recent rediscovery in Arkansas, which was the first report of this species by ornithologists in several decades. Another group of ornithologists reported a series of sightings in Florida the following year, but the issue became controversial when nobody managed to get close enough to an Ivory-billed Woodpecker for a long enough period of time to obtain the clear photo that is regarded as the standard form of evidence for documenting birds. In Louisiana and Florida, video footage was obtained during three encounters with distant birds that were identified in the field as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. The videos show field marks, body proportions, flights, and other behaviors and characteristics that are consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker but no other species of the region. The five most compelling events in the videos are the focus here, but several additional events are also discussed. During four of the most compelling events, the audio track contains sounds that are consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Extensions of previous results include a size comparison and a wingspan estimate that are used to fortify the analysis of two videos from Louisiana. Takeoffs with deep and rapid wingbeats and loud ‘wooden’ wing sounds, which were overlooked during previous analysis of a video that was obtained in Florida, are consistent with an account by Tanner. Additional events in the Florida video are also discussed, including a sudden maneuver during a swooping flight that coincides with ‘spring-like’ sounds. This issue started to evolve into a science scandal when critics, who had become entrenched in the position that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct, used specious arguments to cause a long delay in the publication of evidence that should be sufficient to establish persistence. After openly targeting relatively weak evidence, critics avoided engaging in open discourse on the strongest evidence after it was finally published. Some of the leading science journals helped to enable the scandal by failing to provide diligent oversight and publishing biased reports on the status of this issue. The scandal culminated in a decision by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to declare the Ivory-billed Woodpecker extinct, which was made in the absence of an open discourse on the strongest evidence and in the wake of an unprecedented spike in published reports of sightings during the searches in Arkansas, Florida, and Louisiana.