re: $12,000 Reward for Information Regarding the Whereabouts of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker

First post I saw:

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Too many trolls on here.

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So much smugness!

Tell me if I am wrong in thinking these two are similar:

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---there is no good video or photos proof since 1944, because they are so shy.
---there are no video or photos, because there are so few.
---there are no video or photos, because they live so remote from human beings.
---there are no video or photos, because people always look the wrong places.
---there are no video or photos, because they are kept secret from other people by their finders.
---there are no video of photos just because of repeatly bad luck by the finders.

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Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?

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I have a picture of a suffed black panther that was killed on private property in Louisiana in the 1940's. I saw the mount and even touched it. It was a black jaguar not mountain lion. I also know people that have killed cougars in Louisiana. There is no reason not to still have hope that this bird still exists. Some of you guys here are too pessimistic.

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Post the pic

LINK

shite looks like a shadow elephant to me.

Anyone want to see the red wolf?

What do you guys want?

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This just doesn't make sense to me and is one of the arguments that the believers should just abandon. I mean, they would be the largest of our woodpeckers. The fly. They chip away at wood. The would have to nest somewhere, so constant movement is not possible. They are not all that different from Pileated, and if you go in any wooded area near here, you'll hear 10 and see 4. I guess the bottom line is, at this point, I view it just like the black panther people. I mean, they see them all the time, right

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Damn dude, why'd you have to crush my hopes and dreams like that?

So maybe they found one? SIAP

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"Widely Accepted"

By who?

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By EcoWatch which is an advocacy group rather than scientific organization. The article includes "It reinforced to me that, yes, this bird does exist and left me feeling a sense of responsibility to protect it for the future." so they have a strong bias towards believing it.

I know people that are serious ornithologists, several of whom have spent a lot of time looking for this bird. All of them believe that the current "evidence" is extremely weak, and none believe that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is still around. I really wish that they were wrong.