harley_frog's Journal: "Extinct" Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Rediscovered

Today is a day that I hope to always remember. Today I heard that scientists have confirmed the sighting of an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in eastern Arkansas. My wife was the first to tell me this morning about a segment on NPR about the discovery. I then did a Google news search for the story and found articles from The Washington Post and CNN, among others. Later, I checked the NPR site and found links to the announcement at the Science website, including a link to the PDF file of the article, and Ivorybill.org website.

For those of you who don't know, the Ivory-Billed woodpecker is one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, and was thought to have been extinct for over sixty years. Over the past decades, there have been reported, yet confirmed, sightings of the Ivory-Billed. The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker has become the symbol of the struggle to preserve nature and endangered and threatened species. Now, the confirmation that the Ivory-Billed is indeed still alive is a ray of hope that the environmental mistakes of the past can, with dedication and hard work, can be slowly turned back. Of course, this doesn't help species already lost to us, like the Carolina Parakeet, or the Passenger Pigeon, there is hope for others threatened birds, like the California Condor, the Peregrine Falcon, and the Whooping Crane.

I know this nothing tech related, but it is still very exciting and gives one hope for the future.