"Ghost Bird" Film Blames Woodpecker's Extinction on Forest Clearcutting
"Ghost Bird," the documentary screened at the Tivoli in Kansas City, focused on the controversy surrounding the questionable sighting of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker after a 60-year absence. A remarkable discovery that would give hope to those that see the extinction as a tragic cause of events, possibly contributed by an aggressive effort to stock ornithology collections in US universities and museums. The film was an entertaining and exhaustive expose' of the bird's demise. The film highlights the potential tourism benefits to Brinkley, Arkansas, a depressed area midway between Little Rock and Memphis. The swampy area is a likely habitat for the bird, where business owners and city officials hype the sighting in order to build bird-viewing tourism. After lengthy explanations on the research of the veracity of the sighting, the film reveals the central cause for the bird's extinction: the clearcutting of hundreds of square miles of old growth forest in a...