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IVORY-BILLS FOUND ALIVE IN THE BIG THICKET 
By Betty Groth - Vice President for Conservation 
GREAT SURPRISE TO OUR NATURAL WORLD: Wi} 
the last known Ivory Billed Woodpecker was sighted in no 
Florida more than ten years ago and the bird considered exti 
Ivory Bills have now been found alive in the Texas “ 
Thicket.’’ Twenty-one inches, plumage glossy blue-black, re 
crest bright red, white stripes, and white in primaries, iris lem: 
yellow, this feathered axman of power protects giant disea 
trees from boring beetles and injurious insect larvae other bi 
cannot reach. Campephilus principalis (Linnaeus) — once b 
carpenter of the bird world — is the biggest, handsomest < 
rarest of American Woodpeckers. 
A bird of the deep forest solitudes nesting in the most 
accessible regions of the deep cypress swamps, it once had a rai 
from southeastern United States, north to coastal North Ca 
lina, and in the Mississippi Valley to southern Indiana, south 
Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, western Kentucky, Arkansas, w 
to Texas (Brazos and Trinity Rivers), south to the Gulf Co: 
and in Florida to the Big Cypress district south to the Caloo 
hatchie River. Now extirpated over its former range of gt 
American forests, and considered extinct, this are wild bird 
powerful value has been found again in the Big Thicket. 
What is the Big Thicket? Pioneers, working their way w 
from Louisiana into Texas in the 1820s, found their path blo 
ed by dense thickets stretching along many wild streams. Indi 
journeying by canoe were afraid to stay there. This sprawl 
wilderness of three and one-half million acres (in the nor 
beech forests and longleaf pines; in the south, palmetto jung 
and cypress swamps) ultimately attracted trappers and hunt 
Well into the 20th century, it remained a last refuge for be 
and panthers and as a hideout for bandits and hunted men. 
No other region of comparable botanic diversity exists 
the United States. At least 300 species of birds live here p 
manently, including an unsurpassed variety of water birds, | 
Roseate Spoonbill, Snowy Heron, Water Turkey, Great B 
Heron, Green Heron, Black-Crowned Night Heron, Yello 
Cowned Night Heron, and the North African Cattle Egret. A 
there are four kinds of owls, three kinds of hawks, and a f 
last (American-emblem) Bald Eagles. The famous Whoopi 
Crane is seen there; so is the rare Red-Cockaded Woodpeck 
