Thanks to John (OP) for taking the time to highlight the latest in the IBWO search. Whilst I believe the IBWO (both continental and Cuban) faded away with the almost total clear-felling of its home, I, like many, have always held a flicker of hope that the species made it through the narrowest of habitat bottlenecks. That optimism was, of course, spectacularly ignited by the Cornell declaration in the mid-noughties but all too quickly extinguished as the quest for irrefutable evidence did not decisively deliver in the ensuing years (despite a big $$$ bounty on its head).
The descent of those heady days into pseudoscience, pixel-peeping and bombastic cyber-sniping needs no reminder. The odds could not have been higher: the diversion of scarce conservation dollars and political hubris. But hope and sweat and ever deeper analysis of circumstantial evidence produced precisely the square root of zero. The ensuing volumes on the search, especially Gallagher’s The Grail Bird, were, however, enjoyable reads.
The secondary regeneration of the southern forests may give hope (false or otherwise) to some that the habitat is getting better with every passing year. That the majority is held in private hands further tantalises at the possibility of hidden populations, despite the failure of the post-Cornell search effort. But if the DNA of this mighty woodpecker is indeed lost from those forests then it is just a poignant reminder of the fragility of ecosystems. What once was is no more; what is lost cannot be replaced.
The parallels with Bigfootery are as true as they are false. IBWO is/was a documented living organism, whereas the evidence for the existence of Sasquatch has always fallen short of scientific classification. Bigfoot exists on the edge of reality, a cultural phenomenon akin to a dog chasing it tail evidence-wise. As a child, I enjoyed those 1970s Bigfoot documentaries, a time when the world seemed to still have unexplored corners where fantastic creatures really could exist, hairy proof just a matter of time. Interest in the subject should not be equated with belief.
A few brave academics, notably the late Dr Grover Krantz and Prof Jeff Meldrum, applied the scientific method to unclassified/relict hominoids. Their works are well worth a read on the art of distilling and rejecting pseudoscience and its proponents. Krantz’s ire for the distractions of what he calls the ‘lunatic fringe’ is palpable in his writing. The analysis, interpretation and discussion of data contained within the Luneau video (purported IBWO) and the Patterson-Gimlin footage (purported female Bigfoot) - the Zapruder films of their respective fields – is as much an exploration of the human condition as it is the quest for truth. Replace the switchblade with the Luneau video in the film 12 Angry Men.
If the IBWO did indeed survive the apocalyptic logging of its primordial home, and is still with us, then it’s a lot more adaptable than the literature suggests (and doing perfectly fine). Whilst rumours of the IBWO demise may have been greatly exaggerated, the evidence bar could not be set higher. For those that see the evidence for persistence sufficiently compelling to continue active searching then I wish you the best of luck. Although I do not subscribe to the species as a whole changing personality under hunting pressure accounting for lack of improved photographic evidence, I do not underestimate the difficulty of the terrain having peered into it in Florida. Nor do I underestimate my own ignorance in the analysis of the evidence.
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