-- More on the Plan --

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The USF&W Draft Recovery Plan is getting wide news publicity, with the focus unfortunately on the projected costs, which may never come to pass. The Plan's summary of past information, assessment of significant state-by-state locales, and forest/timber analysis are probably more important centers of focus.
By the way, I neglected to mention in the 2 previous posts that USF&W is seeking public comment on the Plan. Various skeptics, one might guess, are already making a concerted, coordinated effort to register their views.
Comments can be sent to the US F&W Field Office at 646 Cajundome Boulevard, Suite 400, Lafayette, Louisiana, 70506, or faxed 337-291-3139, or delivered via email to ibwplan@fws.gov. (However, some may need to be forewarned that comments like "this sucks" or "give it up, stringers" or "AAARRRRGGHHHHHHH!" might not be taken altogether seriously...)

As the saying goes, "those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them" --- 70 years ago the professional ornithology and birding community failed the Ivory-billed Woodpecker miserably; it took non-birders Mason Spencer and J.J. Kuhn to prove the species' existence, and tap the professionals' interest. Once again, too many in the birding community have given up early on the Ivory-bill based on limited data. At some point the Ivory-billed Woodpecker will indeed 'be history,' but there remains too much evidence that we ain't there yet, and finally a plan has been put forth to study the matter, not piecemeal, but in a comprehensive way. A lot of people contributed to this document, and I suspect there was a lot of disagreement/debate behind the scenes as to its final version, but now that it's before us we ought move forward instead of rehashing the same tiresome arguments over and over and over and....
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