What's your take on the existence of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker aka The Lord God Bird?>2nd largest woodpecker to have existed, treasured for it's bill>named The Lord God Bird because people would exclaim "Lord God, what a bird!" when it swooped past them>the logging industry at the turn of the 20th century destroyed it's habitat of old world trees>birders would literally shoot them down to study them>It wasn't until the early 1900s that people realized they weren't being seen anymore>last ones were spotted in Louisiana in the 1930s and 40s before the land was sold for logging>not officially seen since>supposedly seen in Arkansas in 2004 and Florida in 2005 by very credible ornithologists>crappy bigfoot videos, audio recordings exist>nobody can get a good photo>complicated because Pileated Woodpeckers look almost exactly like them to the untrained eyeI believe they're real and still out there. The evidence is crap but it's worth believing in. Somewhere between Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Cuba, Mexico there's a small population in the dozens I believe.>Only verified footage from the 40'shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QueiSwwtL_g>Supposed 2021 videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaEvqw6pL88>2005 Florida sightinghttps://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/IBWO/IBWOsearch.php>Sufjan Stevens song about themhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXh_Cj6e1oY
>>5125439as likely as tasmanian tigers still existing
Worth noting the IUCN was ready to declare them extinct a few years ago, but an emergency report put out with trailcam footage was convincing enough to delay this reclassification. It's still officially just "critically endangered" despite not being officially seen in over 80 years>Multiple lines of evidence suggest the persistence of the Ivory‐billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in Louisianahttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10194015/
>>5125441big difference between a land mammal and a bird that only lives in swamps that are hard to reach and survey
I think it exists in extremely small numbers but that fact is kept as a secret to prevent thousands of listers from going in and doing callbacks trying to get a glimpse of one. I will freely admit that may be copium but I really hope it's the case.
>>5125614It's not an implausible theory. A small population of 50 California sea otters in Big Sur was kept secret by scientists for decades to prevent them from being poached before conservation efforts took off.
>>5125439Probably extinct with all the supposed recent sightings almost certainly being mere pileateds. As much as we'd all like otherwise, it's gone the way of the passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet. I'll gladly eat my words, but as long as all the proposed evidence is 240p footage from 1000 feet away, I feel it's long since been over.
>>5125660it IS a little strange for the IUCN to keep it listed as "critically endangered" for such a long time...
