Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Today we have photos from Rosemary Alles, a reader who runs an animal conservation organization in South Africa, and is also helping me organize my August trip to Kruger. She originally comes from Sri Lanka but now splits her time between South Africa and the U.S. But I’ll let her narrate herself (her text is indented), and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them. Oh, and there’s a link should you wish to donate to the organization.
Sri-Lanka lies in the shadow of her giant neighbor India; a teardrop on the vast slate of the Indian Ocean. My family emigrated from our island nation many moons ago, leaving a jeweled landscape ravaged by corruption, ethnic violence, and terrorism.
My first home in the West was in Canada, and then, on the Big Island of Hawaii. These days, I travel between South Africa and Hawaii, centering my work on the protection of iconic megafauna, the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos (GMFER).
These images were captured in Kruger National Park during a 3-day journey into Africa’s wild world. We work with wildlife rangers (the Black Mambas and Transfrontier Africa), their extended families, and their children to bring the wonders of South Africa’s wilderness to those who rarely—or never—experience it. Our work with the children in rural communities of Africa helps disrupt poaching and wildlife trafficking and heals the wounds inflicted by apartheid and history.
Currently we are seeking donations to buy 4 large canvas tents to accommodate more children and young adults in our monthly programs designed to disrupt the distance between rural South Africans and their wild heritage; our target goal is 1500.00 USD. You can help us here. [JAC: dig down, please, readers. I don’t ask for anything for me, but these are other species of African mammals who are asking.]
African Bush Elephant (also called “Savannah Elephant,” Loxodonta africana) – male, aka, “Purple Haze”:
Below: images of Nkateko Mzimba, a Black Mamba/Transfrontier Africa Anti-Poaching Ranger at CITES CoP19 (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora – CoP19). Our group -GMFER- sponsored her trip and accompanied her to Panama City in Panama for CoP19; this so she could advocate on behalf of Africa’s iconic wildlife. CITES determines, via representative nation votes, the quotas of wild, endangered species and/or their body parts each country can exploit and export; it also regulates—and not well—quotas of trophy hunts. CITES’ representative body in the United States is the USFWS and operates under the Department of the Interior.
By and large, and much like many international agencies, CITES is largely ineffective and vaguely corrupt. Still, it is the “best thing” we have to monitor and regulate the trade of endangered species.
While in Panama, we collaborated with local schools for a celebration of wildlife on the opening day of CITES’ CoP19. During CoP19, Nkateko’s powerful testimony against Trophy Hunting was delivered prior to a victorious vote on a temporary moratorium on the live capture and trade of wild African elephants.
“After a long and complex debate, Africa’s elephants were finally given some respite when the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) voted in favor of a temporary moratorium on further exports of live wild elephants at its Conference of the Parties in Panama.” – Born Free.
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Nkateko describes how her life changed after she became a ranger – at CITES’ CoP19:
Nkateko testified on agenda Item: 66.4 at CITES’ CoP19 – moratorium on the live capture and trade of wild African elephants:
JAC: If only 300 readers donated $5 each, GMFER would reach its goal of providing shelter for local residents who are learning about wildlife in an effort to save them. Think about making a small (or large) donation here. Money goes a long way in South Africa, so don’t feel shy about donating even $1 or just a couple of bucks. Thanks!
As I’ve described before, I collected the first specimen of Atelopus coynei, a small tropical frog that now has its own Wikipedia page. I collected it in the late 1970s on a field trip to Ecuador with my grad-school bestie, the late Ken Miyata, a man who’s sorely missed (he died in a fishing accident in 1983). As I had loaned Ken $500 to help him pay for rent and food, he did me the honor of naming the frog after me.
As it was rare, and first found in coastal Ecuadorian wet forests, which have largely disappeared, I eventually assumed that my frog was extinct, a metaphor for my own life. But, mirabile dictu, it was rediscovered by the great naturalist and photographer Andreas Kay on February 7, 2012 at Chinambi, Carchi, Ecuador. This was far from the sea, in the rain forest of the Andes foothills near the Colombian border, and the frog was still listed as “critically endangered.”
Then, in 2017, I got an email from naturalist Lou Jost, who reads and contributes to this site, telling me that A. coynei had been found on land close to the EcoMinga Foundation’s Dracula Reserve (Lou co-directs the foundation).
. . . . in December 2017, Javier and our herpetologist and reserve manager Juan Pablo Reyes organized an expedition to explore land we hoped to buy to expand the Dracula Reserve. The expedition included Mario Yanez, a well-known herpetologist from Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity. They were thrilled to discover a good population of Atelopus coynei on one of the properties we were considering!!!! They also discovered another species that had been lost in Ecuador, Rhaebo colomai, though that species was known from a population in nearby Colombia. To top it off they discovered a dramatic completely unknown frog species, yellow with blue eyes!!! This is an amazing area and saving it has become a high priority for us. We are being helped by the Orchid Conservation Alliance, the University of Basel Botanical Garden, and the Rainforest Trust.
The three species mentioned above:
Atelopus coynei, photo by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga. Isn’t it a beaut?
Rhaebo colomai (photo by Mario Yanez):
The new yellow species with blue eyes (photos by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga). I don’t know if it’s been described in the literature yet:
But now the story of A. coynei has been supplemented, as workers at the Dracula Reserve have made the first sighting of its tadpoles! As Lou wrote me on July 28:
We have a monitoring program for Atelopus coynei, and during that monitoring, our sharp-eyed reserve guards found the world’s first-ever A. coynei tadpoles! This is really nice to see, as an indicator of breeding and also as a new piece of the species’ biology. I’ll send pictures to you as soon as I receive them (I haven’t seen them yet). Yippee!
Of course I begged for photos, and yesterday Lou sent some of an adult and several tadpoles along with this note:
Here are the adorable tadpoles and an adult, taken in our Dracula reserve. We are carefully monitoring the population and it looks very healthy. We’ve managed to significantly expand the Dracula Reserve, thanks to grassroots campaigns by the Orchid Conservation Alliance, Reserva: Youth Land Trust, and Rainforest Trust. The photographers of the tadpoles, Milton Canticuz and Luis Micanquer, are local residents who were hired by us as reserve wardens and have become passionate conservationists. I hope you can come and visit them some day!
I surely will. This name is forever, as the scientific names of animals cannot be changed PLUS I’ve never done anything that would make me be canceled. Here is the gorgeous A. coynei and its tadpoles sent by Lou and photographed by Canticuz and Micanquer:
My beautiful, beautiful frog:
And the first photos of its tadpoles:
Note the developing legs:
Of course I asked if Lou was 100% sure that these were A. coynei tadpoles, and he replied:
No, I’m not 100% sure; it is their deduction based on their knowledge of the patterns of local frogs, and our herpetologist experts (who know the local fauna well) concur.
Atelopus coynei, the Rio Faisanes stubfoot toad, is a species of toad in the family Bufonidae endemic to Ecuador. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, subtropical or tropical moist montane forests, and rivers. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Description
Atelopus coynei can be differentiated from other similar species by its ventral patterning, thick fleshy finger webbing that covers its first finger, and from its long hind limbs that cause its heels to overlap when the legs are positioned perpendicular to the body (Miyata 1980).
Range and habitat
Atelopus coynei formerly ranged across the northwestern Andes foothills in Carchi, Imbabura, Pichincha and Santo Domingo provinces of Ecuador, where it lives along stream banks in primary and secondary montane forest between 500 and 2,000 meters elevation.
It currently found in only four disjunct areas in Carchi Province, including two locations in Dracula Reserve and Río Chinambi.
Adults are diurnal, active on rainy days on the rocky banks of river and streams. They rest at night on the leaves of streamside vegetation. They lay eggs on rocks in flowing streams. Tadpoles are typical of Atelopus, remaining attached to rocks. [See photos above for tadpoles on rocks.]
Conservation
The conservation status of Atelopus coynei is assessed as critically endangered. It has a very small population which is continually declining from loss and degradation of its habitat, chiefly from agricultural activities. The population is estimated at fewer than 250 mature individuals.
Stay alive, my frog, and please outlive me! I know that Lou, his colleagues, and the EcoMinga Foundation are doing their best.
This week’s Nature has four article on inequities in STEM, plus a series of ten photographs showing endangered species and ecosystems. I’ll put up screenshots of the articles at the bottom, but hightlight the photographs instead, as I have nothing in me to address the other items, and because people may be unaware of ongoing losses of species and habitats.
Click on the screenshot below to see the ten photos. Because of space limitations, I’ve had to crop them. I’ll show five, and the captions are from the paper. And the photos are BIG, so click on them to see them in their full glory.
The intro:
Global statistics on declining biodiversity can give the impression that every population of every species is in a downward spiral. In fact, many populations are stable or growing, while a small number of species faces truly existential challenges. These photos capture some specific crises. They are images of threats unfolding, of desperate attempts at species defence and of the beautiful living world that is at stake.
The 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference, COP15, opens in Montreal, Canada, on 7 December. At the meeting, delegates will attempt to agree on goals for stabilizing species’ declines by 2030 and reverse them by mid-century. The current draft framework agreement promises nothing less than a “transformation in society’s relationship with biodiversity”.
Corroboree frog. The two species of corroboree frog (Pseudophryne pengilleyi and Pseudophryne corroboree) are among the many amphibians around the world that have been hit hard by chytrid fungus, which causes an infectious disease that can be fatal. To make matters worse, big chunks of the frogs’ habitat in eastern Australia were torched in the 2019–20 bush fires. This northern corroboree frog (P. pengilleyi), bred at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, is part of captive-breeding efforts — some frogs are already back in their habitats, albeit in enclosures with sprinkler systems in case of fire. Frog conservation plans are being designed for a world in which chytrid fungi are everywhere; the pathogens are not going to be eradicated any time soon.
Credit: Jenny Evans/Getty
Fishing fleet. These fishing boats are based in Zhoushan, China, but they might travel to Africa, South America or even Antarctica before they drop their nets. When rich nations overfish their own waters, they often simply go further out. In 2018, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, the Chinese mainland and Taiwan collectively spent $1.5 billion subsidizing their fishing fleets to harvest the exclusive economic zones of other countries. Talks are under way on an international treaty that might ban such subsidies. Such an agreement would end a significant proportion of ‘distant-water fishing’ virtually overnight, according to the US-based non-profit organization, Pew Charitable Trusts — and would have significant benefits for marine biodiversity.
Credit: Shen Lei/VCG/Getty
Cactus fires. A helicopter drops fire retardant in the Sonoran Desert during the 2020 Bighorn Fire in Arizona. This desert was once considered fireproof. But the spread of introduced grasses since the 1970s has changed everything. In dry summers, dead grasses create blankets of dry tinder. Fires then kill native species such as the iconic saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea), continuing the cycle of ‘grassification’.
The best solution is intuitive and low-tech: rip out introduced grasses by the roots or kill them with herbicide. Strategically placed fire breaks might also help to contain future blazes.
Credit: Maxime Aliaga/Nature Picture Library
Expensive rhinos. A black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) stands out against the golden grasslands of Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Rhinos are threatened in part because of the popularity of their horns, which sell for exorbitant prices as medical and luxury items. But black-rhino populations grew at an annual rate of 2.5% between 2012 and 2018, thanks to conservation efforts including costly anti-poaching measures that will be tough to maintain indefinitely. Ultimately, reducing consumer demand for rhino horn will be the best way to safeguard the species.
Credit: Maxime Aliaga/Nature Picture Library
Caught in the crossfire. Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is Africa’s most biodiverse protected area, home to one-third of the world’s mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei).
Conservationists remark that you can destroy an ecosystem overnight, whereas protecting it takes constant effort. Virunga has been threatened by war, refugee crises and oil companies that want what’s underneath its verdure. Currently, the park is occupied by fighters from the M23 rebel group. And the DRC government is considering opening parts of the park to oil and gas exploration.
Credit: Brent Stirton/Getty Images for WWF-Canon
This week’s issue is also full of inequity matter, and rather than comment on any of it, I’ll just give you the links; click any screenshot to read. I find the first one particularly interesting, as it’s an issue whose “fix”, much less its ascertainment, seems hard. Readers are welcome to comment on any of these below.
In response to those two posts, at least seven readers claimed that they had indeed seen an ivorybill. Here are a few comments on my posts:
. . . I think I have a video of one that I took about a week ago.
. . . I have photos and video of this amazing bird down here in Florida. Feel free to contact me. I wanted to leave the photos here however there is no way to do that.
. . . I live in west Georgia. I have seen these birds since I was a child. My grandfather told me they were indain hens. I have been seeing these birds around for over 40 years. I have a pair that stays in the area of my home now.
. . . I seen the picture of the ivory billed wood pecker in a article last week saying they were extinct. But, someone got a picture of one in Louisiana. I’ve been seeing one of those birds on my hunting property in South Texas for the last few years. I’m on the coast surrounded by swamp. That is that bird in the picture.
. . . I have seen this bird at my home in Virginia
. . . . Saw one of them in the early 2000s. Out in the sticks in Louisiana. Didnt realize how significant it was at the time.
. . . . I believe I may have observed two ivory-billed woodpeckers on my property. I wasn’t sure until researching both the ivory and pileated. Their larger size, which is slight, was very notable because they flew directly overhead at low altitude @ 20ft. Most notably was the striking contrast of so much white coloring against the black. They have stripped multiple trees of 70 to 80% of their bark. The trees appear dead, though I can’t state the cause. They were very active this past spring and early summer (2020), then activity was scarce. I have not observed them at all since mid-August. Their vocal calls were more rapid than what I’ve researched, but the classic “kent” sound, and sometimes a more relaxed “koo”.
I urged every one of these readers to document their sightings, publish them, and alert expert birders to them, for it would not only be amazing if the bird were still around, but it would also make the spotter famous.
What have I heard since April?
NOTHING.
What these people probably saw were pileated woodpeckers, not ivorybills. Let us take this as an object lesson to not put a lot of credence in eyewitness evidence. Recent and videos are what we need. and we got bupkes! No commenter even deigned to reply to me or follow up with evidence.
Sadly, the damn bird is extinct, but I’ll still offer $100 to any reader who produces evidence that the species is still around—does so in a way that convinces the birding community.
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A real one photographed in 1935, taken from the Cornell bird site. If you get a good look, you can see that the Ivorybill differs from the pileated in several ways (see here).
The other day I posted a video in which a researcher claimed to have sighted an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the wet bottomlands of Louisiana. It didn’t prove to me that the bird still exists, but raised my Bayesian probability that it does.
One reason why researchers haven’t yet accepted the existence of the bird is that there are still no unequivocal identifying photos or videos of this bird in the wild. The more recent photos and videos are tantalizing, and make me think that it’s more probable than not that Campephilus principalis has not yet become an ex-species, singing with the Choir Invisible. But I’m still not convinced.
Yet over the last two days, a bunch of readers—seven, to be exact—have made comments asserting confidently that they have seen this bird. None of them have expressed doubt. My first response would be “No you haven’t: you’ve seen a Pileated Woodpecker”. If Ivorybills were that common, showing up in people’s backyards (!), then we would have good evidence by now.
So, go to the thread here; I’ve posted all the sightings that readers claim to have made. And feel free to answer those claims (or comment on them), but be polite. My response was “find a bird expert IMMEDIATELY, tell them, and get some good photos.” Birders can contact me if they want me to email the claimants telling them how they have to document the bird. Better yet, birders should VISIT all these people NOW.
Here we go. The first one has my response:
Another:
But wait! There are several more!
This one gives a phone number. Ornithologists and birders—GET ON IT!
For others who want to claim they’ve seen the real Ivorybill, here’s how to tell it from the similar (but smaller) Pileated Woodpecker. Look for the white “saddle” formed by the folded wings, as well as the sexual dimorphism.
(From website): A colorized rendition of a photograph taken by Arthur Allen of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker at a nest in Louisiana’s Singer Tract, 1935. Photo: Cornell Lab of Ornithology
About a week ago I put up a post summarizing a new paper in bioRχiv by Latta et al. reporting the likely persistence of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in an area of bottomland forest in Louisiana. Thought to have been extinct since about 1940, this largest American woodpecker was regarded as one of conservation’s great losses, like the Carolina Parakeet or the Passenger Pigeon. Interest was revived after the publication of a 2005 paper in Science by Fitzpatrick et al., based on photographs and calls, suggesting that individuals of species still remained. But attempts to replicate those sightings failed, and disappointed birders were more convinced that the Ivorybill was indeed gone.
But now we have the Latta et al. report of living Ivorybills, and I find it a bit more convincing than the Science paper of 2005. The more recent report was based on a decade’s worth of drone and trail-camera footage with suggestive images showing the unique field marks of this bird, including its large size, its unique “manspreading” and laid-back stance on trees, and its white saddle and black-and-white wing markings. See my earlier post for the data that convinced me that there’s a decent chance this bird is still alive, though its restricted habitat would surely make it “endangered.”
The article below, from EcoWatch(click on screenshot) is of interest not because it gives new data, as it doesn’t (it’s a news report), but because it includes some newly released videos taken in Louisiana in 2006 and 2008—between the two periods of research that led to the paper) that show more suggestive evidence of living ivorybills, including size, stance, its method of flying (sometimes folding up the wings), and white coloration.
Watch the YouTube video below and come to your own conclusions. (I’m sure birders will be more skeptical than I, and that’s great.)
The supplementary page cited on the YouTube page, which has additional video, shows that work was done largely by one Michael D. Collins, not an author of either paper. What we have, then, is one man giving his observations and measurements, and concluding that he’s seen Ivorybills rather than the smaller relative the Pileated Woopecker. But the work was not trivial!
Now the will to believe is strong, and people want to think that the Ivorybill is still alive. But after watching the 24-minute video below, I have to say that my priors that the Ivorybill still exists have increased a bit.
Still, nobody is going to accept that this species is still alive until we get much better videos and photos. But have a look! Collins actually gives better location data than either paper cited above, which will of course entice the area to be flooded with birders. That may not be good, which is why those other papers did not divulge the exact location of their observations.
UPDATE: I have removed the photos from the new paper as the authors have copyrighted them and won’t give me permission to use them. , but you can see them at the site.
In 2005, a paper in Science by Fitzpatrick et al. produced a flurry of ornithological excitement. The paper (click on screenshot below) adduced evidence that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis—thought to have been extinct in the US (and elsewhere) since about 1940—was actually persisting in wet lowland forests of the South. This was based on sightings and recordings of calls, but the photographs weren’t that convincing. Nevertheless, the authors declared that the bird persists: click on the screenshot to read.
This magnificent beast, the third largest woodpecker in the world, used to have a fairly broad range across the South, but was limited to wet lowland forests with very old trees. Loss of habitat caused a big popuation decline, and fewer and fewer sightings were made. Here’s a photo of a male from Louisiana in 1935, and another, showing both sexes, is colorized below:
A colorized rendition of a photograph taken by Arthur Allen of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker at a nest in Louisiana’s Singer Tract, 1935. Photo: Cornell Lab of Ornithology
As you can see from the second photo, one distinctive feature of this bird is the sexual dimorphism in crest color: males have red crests and females black ones. Ivorybills also have a distinctive white “saddle” on their back, and white patches on the wings. These features, and the larger size of the Ivory-billed, distinguish it from a similar species, the pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), the largest woodpecker known to exist in the U.S. (many of us have seen them).
Here’s a comparison of both species that I showed when I wrote about the Ivorybill in 2010. Note the white saddle of the Ivory-billed, absent in the pileated, and the sexual dimorphism of the crest. Also, there are differences in facial coloration. It is the superficial similarity of the ivory-billed to the pileated that has led people to declare that, after seeing the latter (they co-occurred), the former was still around.
Audubon’s painting:
And a drawer of preserved ivorybills from Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (again note the sexual dimorphism):
But over the years after 2005, repeated forays into Louisiana bottomland—the people who see these things tend to keep the locations secret as the places would get overrun with birders and gawkers—failed to turn up convincing evidence of the bird (a really good couple of photos or videos would do). And despite a movie made about the “rediscovery”, Ghost Bird (and a presentation on YouTube), people lost confidence that this elusive bird was still around, and interest waned. Except among a small group who have just published a paper.
And so, apparently, this woodpecker joined the passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet as one of America’s most famous extinct bird species. It was declared an ex-woodpecker, singing with the Choir Invisible.
But wait—not so fast! I was alerted to a new paper by this tweet from Matthew, linking to a paper that gives pretty convincing evidence that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is still around, though not numerous.
Anyone interested in ivory-billed woodpeckers should read this paper and especially look at the images and videos. Taken together, this evidence seems conclusive.
Multiple lines of evidence indicate survival of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Louisiana https://t.co/DmhXIteNrG
I’ve read the paper, as have two of my ornithological colleagues, and both declare that the evidence in the paper below is fairly strong. Click on the screenshot to read it, and download the paper here. Do note that this is an unpublished manuscript, and appears on bioRχiv. It must be reviewed and published before its credibility can increase.
What’s the evidence? Well, the authors scoured a 93 km² (36² mi) area of Louisiana bottomland and mosaic upland for ten years, using both high-flying drones (for 3 years) and trail cameras, and came up with a number of photos, as well as recordings and videos (the photos are the evidence they present. There were 438,000 camera hours of watching and about 1590 drone flights. The evidence, as they say above, is multifarious. It includes these features:
PHOTOS REMOVED AT AUTHORS’ REQUEST
1.)Morphology: Photos show the white saddle and a dimorphism of crest color, though the photos are admittedly not great. Here are a couple from the paper (captions from the paper; also, see the paper for the videos). I’ve put an arrow by the white saddle:
Enlarged: left column is an Ivorybill photographed years ago in Cuba (where they once lived as well), and the right column shows a new photo and enlargement:
The bird they photographed is also larger than related species photographed on the same tree. Here’s another photo.
There are also apparent differences in crest color seen in some photos like this one, with one member of a pair having a red crest and the other a black one:
2.) Behavior. The ivorybill has a different morphology of feet and legs from that of other woodpeckers. This results in a very different stance of the ivorybill when it’s sitting on a vertical trunk.
From the paper:
Most intriguing is that these images depict the distinctive morphological adaptations of the feet and legs of Campephilus woodpeckers as compared with Dryocopus woodpeckers like the Pileated Woodpecker (33). The phenotypically similar Pileated is one of the most unspecialized of the truly arboreal woodpeckers, while the Campephilus woodpeckers are characterized by pamprodactyly, a pedal morphology that enables the forward rotation of all four toes (33). The specialized modifications in the highly arboreal Ivory-billed Woodpecker are not so much in the structure of the toes as in the position of the legs. The feet are held outward from the body and are directed diagonally upward and sidewise (Figure 7), with both feet wide apart and more anterior relative to the body (33, 34). Usually the angle between the tarsi and the horizontal plane is ≤45˚, and often seem to be pressed against the tree trunk. This is very different from the condition seen in most woodpeckers, as, for example, the Pileated Woodpecker, where the legs are held more or less beneath the pelvic girdle, the joints are fully flexed, and the tarsi are held well away from the tree trunk. This generally results also in a more obtuse angle of the intertarsal joint (where the leg bends between the tibiotarsus and the tarsometatarsus), and is evidence of the better scansorial adaptations of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker compared to the PileatedWoodpecker (33). This obtuse angle is visible from a distance, is readily seen in our images (Figures 6, 7), and can be a useful identification clue in situations where lighting or distance makes it hard to observe plumage details with clarity (35). Combined with feet extended diagonally upward and to the side of the body, the stance of the birds appearing here are consistent with that of a Campephilus sp.
In other words, the ivorybills show what a feminist ornithologist might call “birdspreading”, with a wide stance, legs angled upward (not below the pelvis, as in the pileated), and feet forward. Two photos (A and D below) are from this study. No other woodpecker stands like this.
Fig. 7: Comparison of photographs taken of apparent Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Louisiana from this study (A, D), with a colorized Ivory-billed Woodpecker, also from Louisiana, but taken by Arthur A. Allen in 1935 (B), and a Pale-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus guatemalensis) are directed diagonally upward and sidewise, with both feet wide apart and forward. The angle between the tarsi and the horizontal plane is ≤45˚ and there is an obtuse angle of the intertarsal joint. Photos (B) and (C) are from the James T. Tanner, and the Arthur A. Allen papers, respectively, courtesy Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
I encourage you to watch the two video clips (successions of trail-camera photos), which you’ll find here.
There are several other behavioral indices that these are ivorybills. Comporting with historical observations, the birds seen recently fly high and far, having big home ranges. They are also fast. All three of these features differ from the pileated, whose flight is quoted as being “rather slow, but vigorous and direct.”
Finally, while pileateds forage alone, the authors of the present paper saw three of the putative ivorybills foraging just a few meters apart—perhaps a family group. This of course is one anecdote, but it adds to the evidence.
The authors conclude (and I agree, along with some birders), that they have indeed seen living individuals of Ivory-billed woodpeckers.
But some ornithologists aren’t convinced, and for good reason: the evidence, while pretty good, is not strong enough to be dispositive. When I asked my colleague Steve Pruett-Jones what it would take to convince ornithologists that the species isn’t extinct, he said this:
Well, I’m not really sure. It would vary with the person I guess. Clear, unmistakable photographs or a video would do it.
The paper in question has not yet been peer reviewed and so there may be additional criticisms that come to light.
The criticisms of the earlier reports (over the last 10 years) were generally along the lines of ‘without a clear photograph, you can’t completely rule out a pileated woodpecker’.
This criticism or skepticism is also rooted in the belief/assumption that there are so many birdwatchers now, and there are so few large intact flooded areas where the bird could survive, that if it was still alive, it would have been seen by more people.
Steve, who is fairly convinced by the evidence, also sent me a link to the only summary of this new paper I’ve seen, from revkinbulletin. It does give criticisms, including some by ecologist Stuart Pimm. They don’t dismiss the evidence, but Pimm argues that the amount of habitat left for these birds is so small that some individuals must have crossed open areas and been seen by birders.
The conclusion is that old chestnut of scientific conclusions: “More work needs to be done.” But one thing is for sure: this new work (which is ongoing) will make birders think twice about declaring the ivorybill extinct, and will spur new efforts to find it. Of course without a concerted effort to save or increase the habitat (wet bottomland forest), seeing the bird is not the same thing as saving it.
I suppose it was inevitable that “invasive” species—species that take over a new area, often far from their native habitat—would be compared by the “progressive” Left to human immigrants, and thus the impact of these species minimized or even lauded. That’s the conclusion you can draw from the headline at the uber-woke Vox website below.
Actually, the article isn’t all that bad, as it does point out that some invasive species destroy ecosystems and must be controlled; other species are moving due to climate change; draws a distinction between true invasives and those deliberately introduced (see Wikipedia’s list of 100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species; the name “alien will alienate many here, lacking only the adjective “illegal” to enrage the woke); calls attention to the cruel way many invaders are destroyed (poisons can cause an agonizing death), and raises moral issues that should be considered (how do we trade off the death of sentient animals, or nonsentient plants, against native habitat and wildlife)? Those are all things to consider.
But the tenor of the article is one of equating human immigrants with invading species. As a biologist, I admit my biases that when trading off an invader that destroys native species and ecosystems, I give precedence to the natives. Each extinct species is a book that tells us not only about its ancestry, but also can impart fascinating facts about biology. Think of the Hawaiian Islands, where 95 out of the 142 endemic bird species (those found nowhere else) have gone extinct, not just because of habitat damage but because of introduced predators like rats and mongooses who destroy eggs, or feral pigs that destroy habitat. My solution would be, if possible, to get rid of the predators and pigs (as humanely as possible) and try to stem habitat loss. Problems like this exist all over the world, and unless you have no appreciation for nature at all, you must think about invasion vs. conservation.
I have to say, though, that although the Vox article gives lip service to some truly damaging invasive species (e.g., cats and foxes that kill Australian marsupials), they tend to downplay many cases, like the interbreeding of coyotes with endangered red wolves (see below), my impression is that the article is written by a Leftist who favors open borders for the U.S. But of course the most invasive species of all, and the greatest danger to native species, is Homo sapiens.
Read and judge; you might take issue with my claims above.
As I said, the article isn’t as bad as it could be, but that’s not saying much when it comes to Vox. Here’s a list of sentences and phrases where author Bolotnikova explicitly use the human/invasive species analogy:
For example, invasives can be considered a threat not only by killing or outcompeting native species but also by mating with them. To protect the “genetic integrity” of species, conservationists often go to extraordinary lengths to prevent animals from hybridizing, environmental writer Emma Marris points out in her book Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World. Consider the effort in North Carolina to prevent coyotes from breeding with endangered red wolves, which bears uncomfortable parallels to Western preoccupations with racial purity that only recently went out of fashion.
Good Lord! Only those who are looking for offense would find these “parallels”. Wolves and coyotes are different biological species, for one thing.
. . .That’s why some scientists look askance at the influence of invasion biology and argue that the field has a baked-in, nativist bias on documenting negative consequences of introduced species and preserving nature as it is. Invasion biology is like epidemiology, the study of disease spread, biologists Matthew Chew and Scott Carroll wrote in a widely read opinion piece a decade ago, in that it is “a discipline explicitly devoted to destroying that which it studies.”
Historically, the term has erroneously expanded to the idea of, “‘If you’re not from here, then you are most likely going to be invasive,’” Sonia Shah, author of The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, said on a June 2021 episode of Unexplainable, Vox’s science-mysteries podcast. Conservation policies have been crafted around the idea that if something is not from “here” — however we define that — “then it is likely to become invasive, and therefore we should repel it even before it causes any actual damage,” as Shah says, which is part of the nativist bent that pervades ecological management.
Now these are uncomfortable parallels, but they’re between human immigration and animal invasions (animals are often moved deliberately by humans). This could—and may well have intended to—be an argument for letting immigrants go wherever they want. But wait! There’s more!:
. . .What’s more, the very notion of “invasion” draws on a war metaphor, and media narratives about non-native species are remarkablysimilar to those describing enemy armies or immigrants. For example, a recent news story in the Guardian about armadillos “besieging” North Carolina described them as “pests” and “freakish.” It also gawked at the animal’s “booming reproduction rate,” an allegation that, not coincidentally, is leveled against human migrants.
Well, we use invasion and war as metaphors for disease to. Is the “battle against covid” an alt-right slur on immigration?
We always have to be wary of teaching “indigenous knowledge” as equivalent to Western science. (New Zealand is having a real issue with that right now.) Here’s a confusing paragraph about that:
Indigenous knowledge is increasingly being recognized as essential to conservation, write Nicholas Reo and Laura Ogden — Dartmouth University professors of Indigenous environmental studies and anthropology, respectively — in an ethnographic study of Anishinaabe perspectives on invasive species. (The Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related First Nations peoples in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the US.) Anishinaabe ideas, Reo and Ogden found, reflect a worldview that sees animals and plants as belonging to nations with their own purposes and believes people have the responsibility to find the reason for a species’ migration. The authors’ sources recognized parallels between the extermination of species deemed invasive and the dark history of colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. The interviews “helped me recognize the ways in which different philosophies of the world shape our ethical response to change,” Ogden says.
But do the Anishinaabe try to find out the reasons for species migrations? If they do, then they have to use modern science. If they don’t, then this is irrelevant to the issue of conservation.
Finally, the article couldn’t resist using the word “diaspora”, which is usually applied to Jews but refers to any people dispersed widely from where they originally lived. This is the first time I’ve seen it applied to animals:
In Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of Chile and Argentina, a particularly dramatic novel ecosystem is taking shape. In 1946, beavers were introduced there in a futile attempt to create a fur industry. Instead, the animals proliferated and munched down the region’s Nothofagus — southern beech — forests, creating dams and ponds. “They are these miraculous world builders,” says Ogden, who wrote an essay imagining the beavers not as invaders, but as a diaspora. (Beavers have also been a boon for ducks and other marine species.) The invasive species paradigm, Ogden adds, is devoid of nuance, history, and politics; she prefers a concept that gives expression to the moral complexity of the beavers’ presence in South America, as well as the fact that they had no choice in being moved there.
Ecologist Dan Simberloff, however, deems this invasion a “disaster” for the native habitat.
As I said, this article is not without merit. It raises questions about invasive species (do they really damage native habitat or fauna?) that laypeople may not have considered, but, believe me, biologists have considered. But there are moral questions that biologists haven’t considered: is it worth the lives of 10,000 beavers, for instance, to save the Patagonian forests? Biologists say “yes”, for we’ll always have beavers, but Patagonian forests (or Hawaiian birds), once gone, are gone for good. (Yes, the beavers should be exterminated humanely, which I suppose the Vox article would consider “genocide”.)
But in general, this article, conflating the problem of human immigration and crossing of politically determined borders with the invasion of animals and plants into novel areas, is a good example of the naturalistic fallacy. We learn nothing about how to deal with human immigration from studying invasive species. Not only that, but if you want to be more accurate in your analogy, you’d liken invasive species not to Central Americans crowded at the American border, but to Cortéz genocidal extinction of the Aztecs. After all, human immigrants don’t wipe out the population into which they meld.
Here are four extinct species once on Oahu, one of the Hawaiian islands:
