A Vanished Fowl Would possibly Stay On, or Possibly Not. The Video Is Grainy.

If there’s new hope, it’s blurry. What’s sure: the curler coaster story of the ivory-billed woodpecker, an impressive chicken whose presumed extinction has been punctuated by a collection of contested rediscoveries, goes sturdy.

The most recent twist is an article Thursday within the journal Ecology and Evolution presenting sighting experiences, audio recordings, path digital camera pictures and drone video. Collected over the past decade in a Louisiana swamp forest, the exact location omitted for the birds’ safety, the authors write that the proof suggests the “intermittent but repeated presence” of birds that look and behave like ivory-billed woodpeckers.

However are they?

“It’s this cumulative evidence from our multiyear search that leaves us very confident that this iconic species exists, and it persists in Louisiana and probably other places as well,” mentioned Steven C. Latta, one of many examine’s authors and director of conservation and area analysis on the Nationwide Aviary, a nonprofit chicken zoo in Pittsburgh that helps lead a program that searches for the species.

However Dr. Latta acknowledges that no single piece of proof is definitive, and the examine is rigorously tempered with phrases like “putative” and “possible.”

Therein lies the issue. As one knowledgeable wrote throughout a earlier ivory invoice go-round: “The body of evidence is only as strong as the single strongest piece — ten cups of weak coffee do not make a pot of strong coffee.”

This time, two consultants who’ve been skeptical of earlier sightings mentioned they remained unconvinced.

“The trouble is, it’s all very poor video,” mentioned Chris Elphick, a professor of conservation biology on the College of Connecticut who research birds. Pileated and red-headed woodpeckers, amongst different species, can look loads like ivory payments from a distance or from sure angles. Mild can play video games with the attention. Audio is straightforward to misconstrue.

“I don’t think this changes very much, frankly,” he mentioned. “I would love to be wrong.”

A spokeswoman, Christine Schuldheisz, mentioned the company didn’t touch upon exterior research however was working towards a last choice, which is anticipated later this 12 months.

Based on the authors of the brand new examine, eradicating federal safety can be unhealthy for any remaining ivory payments. However different scientists say there’s a steep worth to preserving them on the endangered species record.

“Whether or not limited federal conservation funds should be spent on chasing this ghost, instead of saving other genuinely endangered species and habitats, is a vital issue,” mentioned Richard O. Prum, a professor of ornithology at Yale.

Ivory payments fell into steep decline as Individuals logged their habitat, old-growth swampy forests of the Southeast. Few remained by the Thirties, however a scientific expedition found a nest in Louisiana, in one of many largest remaining swaths of habitat. The land, referred to as the Singer Tract, was leased for logging. Conservation teams tried to buy the rights, however the firm refused to promote. The final broadly accepted ivory invoice sighting in the US was in 1944, a lone feminine, seen in her roost with the forest cleared round her.

Since then, purported sightings have sparked pleasure and backlash. One, in 1967, was heralded on the entrance web page of The New York Occasions. Twenty years later, one other one, in Cuba, the place a subspecies or comparable species could or could not dangle on, was additionally reported on Web page One. In 2002, searchers in Louisiana thought they’d captured audio of the ivory invoice’s distinctive double rap, however a pc evaluation decided the sound to be distant gunshots. A reported sighting in Arkansas in 2004 led to a paper in Science and flurry of chicken tourism, however that proof was closely criticized.

To Dr. Elphick, a birder in addition to a scientist, one of the vital telling outcomes is what a lot effort has not yielded: a single clear {photograph}.

“There are these incredibly rare birds that live in the middle of the Amazon that people can get good, identifiable photographs of,” Dr. Elphick mentioned. “And yet people have spent hundreds of thousands of hours trying to find and photograph ivory-billed woodpeckers in the United States. If there’s really a population out there, it’s inconceivable to me that no one could get a good picture.”

However Dr. Latta, the examine co-author, insisted that he had seen one clearly together with his personal eyes. He was within the area in 2019 to arrange recording items, and he figures he spooked the chicken. Because it flew up and away, he obtained an in depth, unimpeded view of its signature markings.

“I couldn’t sleep for, like, three days,” Dr. Latta mentioned. “It was because I had this opportunity and I felt this responsibility to establish for the rest of the world, or at least the conservation world, that this bird actually does exist.”