Yesterday, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service posted submissions from Steve Latta and me on the proposed delisting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The comment period closed on Monday, August 8th, but there was a slight delay in posting our material due to the number and size of files included.

I delivered the recorded presentation below on July 22, 2022; it includes newly discovered drone video footage obtained in February 2021. In my view, this video is compelling and is among the strongest evidence presented to date. The bird in question is clearly a woodpecker and is inconsistent with anything but ivorybill. I was thrilled when I first saw it in its original format, without any cropping or resizing.

In addition to the presentation, the submission includes the original high definition videos, as well as the modified versions that are shown in the recording. We thought it important to make this material available for review and careful analysis.

The high definition drone video files, identified with the prefix MAX, are over 400 mb each and cannot be meaningfully viewed without a higher end video card and quality monitor. (For example, they won’t play on a 2019 MacBook Pro but are viewable on a 2022 Mac Studio.) All of this material is available for download from the Federal Register.

Steven Latta’s submission is also available from the Federal Register. It includes an introductory statement, the preprint of our paper, and addendum incorporating the still images that were compiled in an animated, video format in the paper’s “Movie S2”.

We are confident in our evidence and hopeful that the Service will not delist the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

For additional information, visit the National Aviary’s Project Principalis and News pages.