Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Ivory Woodpecker ( Campephilus principalis )

The ivory woodpecker ( Campephilus principalis ), also known as Mr. Specht, is the second largest woodpecker in North America. He is closely related to the slightly larger imperial woodpecker ( Campephilus imperialis ), in the highland forests of Mexico had its habitat. It must be feared that both species have become extinct in the second half of the 20th century, although repeatedly sightings are reported, however, were never clearly verify yourself.

Features

The ivory woodpecker is black -and-white patterned, has a red crest and a ivory-colored beak. He is 48-53 cm tall and has a wingspan of about 76 cm. The weight of an ivory woodpecker is 450-570 grams. Ivory woodpeckers are about 15 years old. Its habitat is the dead wood in forests, often on swampy ground.

Threat story

As early as 1880 he was threatened. By 1920 he was considered extinct, but has been spotted in the woods of Louisiana in 1944. In Cuba, the species was last observed in 1987. In 1994 he was therefore declared by the World Conservation Union extinct. 1998, an expedition discovered in the Sierra Maestra evidence of a small population, without being able to directly observe ivory woodpeckers. 2004, however, observed a canoeist in a nature reserve in Arkansas bird allegedly again. Evidence for the existence of at least one bird in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge (Arkansas ), researchers from Cornell University vorlegten in April 2005, are controversial in the scientific world, so at the moment there can be no final statement on the status of the species. In May 2006, a prize of U.S. $ 10,000 was suspended for one who provides a photographic evidence of the continued existence of the ivory woodpecker. The latest project to investigate whether the occurrence of a population in the swamps of Arkansas actually applies is tried with a chip-controlled camera surveillance. As to May 2007 further searches of Cornell University were unsuccessful, many scientists fear that the ivory woodpecker is actually extinct.

Bellows of ivory woodpecker are rare in European institutions, but can be found for example in the museum Heineanum in Halberstadt, in the Natural History Museum Vienna, the Museum of Natural History (Berlin) and the Overseas Museum Bremen.