The ivory-billed woodpecker, wan ghost of southern woodlands, may actually be flying forth from its niche in extinction. In April 1999 David Kulivan, an undergraduate majoring in forestry at Louisiana State University (LSU), walked into the forest to hunt wild turkeys. He emerged with the news that he had seen not one but two ivorybills. This spring, teams of biologists, birders, and students are combing remote areas of eastern Louisiana's 35,000-acre Pearl River Wildlife Management Area. Meanwhile, researchers are fanning across southeastern Cuba's 123,000-acre Sierra Maestra, looking for the large, flamboyant woodpecker, which has been believed to be extinct for several decades.

"We can't ignore the reports," says Frank Gill, president of the American Ornithologists' Union and the National Audubon Society's vice-president for science. "Experienced professionals in Louisiana agree that the report from the Pearl River area is the most credible in years." 

There has been no comparable search in response to a possible ivorybill sighting in the United States in 50 years. Alleged sightings are quickly written off as confusion between the ivorybill, a bird which averaged 19 inches in length, and the look-alike pileated woodpecker, which averages 16 inches. But Kulivan knows the woods. "I've been hunting in this area since I was a kid," he says. "That morning, I was sitting at the base of a tree. Suddenly, these two birds were in the trees. I watched them for 15 minutes. The male--the bird with a red crest--seemed to be doing all the calling. I was awfully excited when they flew away. I tried to follow them, but they were gone."

The window of opportunity for spotting ivorybills in the bottomland forest is narrow. The area is often flooded, and with the arrival of hot weather, search teams encounter hordes of mosquitoes, dense foliage, and impenetrable undergrowth. Drought made this year's well-organized search possible. Some searchers claim to have heard the ivorybills' "tin-horn" calls.

Louisiana has responded to the sighting by putting a two-year moratorium on timber cutting in the area. The National Audubon Society, which sponsored Cornell biologist James Tanner's classic studies on the ivorybills during the late 1930s and hired a warden to guard an area where ivorybills had been seen in the early 1950s, is also helping fund the current search. 

Meanwhile, Audubon is supporting efforts to find surviving ivorybills in Cuba, the southernmost part of the bird's historic range.  "The Cubans are taking this very seriously," says Gill. "Search teams have already found feeding sites of ivorybills and heard their calls."

Cybercrime
Rare Frozen Tiger Cub!!! Wow!!! Take a Look!!!

In the pre e-commerce world, Neil Mendelsohn, a Fish and Wildlife Service agent based in Torrance, California, could not have added a freshly frozen, stillborn tiger cub or an African leopard skin to his impoundment collection without leaving his office. But last year Mendelsohn spotted the two items on eBay for just $1,500--and in doing so nabbed the trafficker who sold them, Michael Moore of Simi Valley, California. After the crackdown Mendelsohn received assurances from eBay, the world's top on-line auction site, that it would do a better job of policing activity on its site. But in January, when environmentalists at Florida's Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC), a sea turtle watchdog group, clicked on to eBay, they were shocked to find dozens of endangered-species parts--everything from elephant ivory to tortoiseshell cigarette cases to Siberian bearskin rugs.

"Before the Internet, you had to be in a fairly close community of dealers to obtain stuff like rhinoceros horns," Mendelsohn says.  "Now you can go searching for it at a keystroke." Today he and many Fish and Wildlife Service agents actively monitor eBay and 35 other on-line auction sites. A host of federal laws bar selling most wildlife across interstate boundaries, as well as trafficking in endangered-species parts, including antique ones (there are some exceptions for ivory). But many collectors don't realize that the same laws apply in cyberspace. "It concerns me that people see these products advertised on the Internet and think that it's okay to purchase them," Mendelsohn says.

"We don't want this merchandise up there either," says Kevin Pursglove, eBay's communication director. "But with 500,000 new items added every day, I'm sure some people will bend the rules." In fact, eBay prohibits the sale of endangered species and has closed down numerous auctions and even suspended serial violators. Still, Gary Appelson, advocacy coordinator for the CCC, says that eBay relies primarily on its 10 million users to report possible violations. Still, the situation may be improving, according to Bob Snow, a Fish and Wildlife agent in California who is tracking wildlife products on eBay. "I'm starting to have a lot more trouble finding illegal items." 
 

REPORTS

Reef Madness

Though it was demolished three years ago, Cleveland's Municipal Stadium still draws crowds, only this time they're smallmouth bass, rock bass, yellow perch, and walleye. Rubble from the old ballpark, once home to the Indians and the Browns, has been used to build three artificial reefs off the city's waterfront, in a part of Lake Erie that had been void of fish habitat. Now the sites have up to 60 times more fish than comparable areas without reefs. "We're seeing fish where we didn't before," says David Kelch, a reef designer for Ohio Sea Grant. The zigzag-shaped reefs, which were placed in 30 to 35 feet of water, offer forage and shelter for visiting perch and walleye and homes for smallmouth bass, whose populations are booming in their new habitats near the shore.  The reefs are now being touted as a tool to help the Great Lakes fishery continue its rebirth. Kelch has already helped Illinois build a reef off Chicago. And now, with Milwaukee and Detroit planning to tear down their old stadiums, even more rubble may be turned into reefs.

Transplant Trauma

For the past decade, several local governments in Arizona have required developers to transplant the state's famed saguaro cactus from new building sites. But in the first study of the practice, biologists monitored 800 transplants of the slow-growing giants for four years and found that 131 of them had died. What's more, the larger the cactus, the higher the mortality rate. "This shows that our plant-preservation ordinances are feel-good," says Lisa Harris, the biologist who led the University of Arizona study. "Probably we should just have developers leave larger saguaros alone in the first place."