-- Upcoming --

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"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

                                                       -- Richard Feynman (bold added)

Gee, time flies, and the big day is almost upon us for the USFWS Zoom meeting Wednesday evening, following a pretty crazy few weeks over at the FB “Ivory-billed Woodpecker Re-discovered” group pages; probably hasn’t been that much active debate since early years over at BirdForum.net (and, on this very blog).

I still don't know what the format, ground rules, order of speakers, will be for the meeting, but shan't be long now.

Never been sure in my own mind whether FWS called for this meeting and comment extension because they genuinely wanted to review more scientific evidence for the species, or, more for public relations reasons, to mollify vocal believers by offering them a full hearing… but for now I’ll stick with my prediction that, barring truly new, significant evidence from the current winter search season, their decision to de-list will remain unchanged (though could be delayed).

I've employed the famous quote above from physicist Richard Feynman because I think that in essence will be the underlying message skeptics may employ at the Zoom meeting regarding "evidence" for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. And that will be the perception "believers" must overcome. No easy task. USFWS will be left to ponder whether there is greater risk of egg-on-their-face by declaring the species extinct, only to have it possibly documented in the future, or by maintaining it as endangered when most of the birding/ornithological/conservation community believes it extinct.

I presume that the bulk of regular readers here will already be familiar with what the 'pro'-IBWO speakers will have to say; what will be interesting to see is which skeptics speak (perhaps including some 'rock-star' birders), and which points they choose to emphasize in the limited time. One person I'd be particularly interested to hear from is Pete Dunne, but no idea if he's involved.

[actually not certain how much, if any, of the meeting I'll sit in on, though sure it will be well covered elsewhere if I don't manage to carve out the needed time]

P.S.... on a complete side-note, I awoke this morning to find this post in my Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/mkeriverkeeper/status/1485270284454219777

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