Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Cuba: What if we were free to look?

I read with interest the fact sheet on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (IBWO) $10 million federal funding package for 2005-2006. Among the items not related to habitat management, acquisition, or restoration (which benefit a suite of species other than IBWO) is $2 million to formulate a recovery plan and educational materials, $500,000 for enhanced law enforcement, and $400,000 for additional public education.

It’s difficult to assess how much of this outpouring of funding was political posturing by an administration with a reputation for undermining the Endangered Species Act and a generally piss-poor environmental record, and how much was based on sound science. Certainly it seems to fly at least a little in the face of common sense. Recall that there is no evidence that there is more than a single IBWO in the United States, despite thousands of hours of effort over the course of a year by a team of dozens of field workers.  And, as I reported in a previous post, over 200 listed species do not have recovery plans, most of which have far less dubious populations and many of which have a higher recovery priority than the IBWO.  If only the Newcomb's Snail, the Vermilion Darter, or the Comal Springs dryopid beetle could capture the public's imagination like the IBWO, perhaps they, too, would finally get recovery plans.

Anyway, in contrast with the lack of confirmed sightings over the last 25 years in the U.S., sightings of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (that’s intentionally plural) have occurred in a place where the U.S. government not only refuses to spend a red cent, but also engineers roadblocks to make it as difficult as possible for American researchers to perform any sort of significant field work. That place is Cuba.

Jerry Jackson provided an excellent chronology of IBWO sightings in Cuba in his Birds of North America account. Since 1980, woodpeckers or evidence of them was found on at least six different occasions; the latest was in 1991 by John McNeely. I know John, have traveled to Cuba with him, have heard his account, and have no reason to doubt its authenticity. After his own searches in areas of northeastern Cuba where IBWO had been reported, Martjan Lammertink declared the bird extinct. Obviously, he was a bit premature in his statement. The IBWO account in BirdLife International’s Threatened Birds of the World notes that there is renewed hope following a 1998 report from the Sierra Maestra in Cuba – a different location than where the previous reports originated.

Compared to the effort over over the last two decades -- or even the last five years -- in the U.S., little effort  has been expended searching for IBWO in Cuba.  Chalk it up to the asinine, ineffective, 45-year-old U.S. embargo.

U.S. policy has a direct impact on bird conservation: it makes it extremely difficult to fund conservation work, for American researchers to travel to Cuba, or for American scientists to provide equipment or expertise to Cuban colleagues.  Here's a lovely example, the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act. Even while recognizing the importance of the West Indies to migratory birds (Cuba being the largest island and extremely important as a wintering and stopover site), it states that a funded project may be located “In the United States and in all countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba.”  While intended to focus on migratory birds, any work done in areas where there might be IBWO would be a step in the right direction.

Travel to Cuba for professional researchers, who are theoretically permitted to apply for licenses, remains an increasingly thorny issue.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science maintains an entire section on its web site on the right of American scientists to travel to Cuba, including a report, The Effect of Travel Restrictions on Scientific Collaboration Between American and Cuban Scientists. This report is dated 1998, and things under the Bush Administration have only gotten worse (there is more recent info at the Center for International Policy, and lots of right to travel information at Global Exchange).

U.S. sanctions even prohibit an American scientist from providing substantive editorial help to a Cuban author, even if it is part of a peer-review process.  Some forms of typical style and copy editing, frequently utilized by reviewers of manuscripts, may result in a violation.  This ruling by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the muscle behind Cuba sanctions, was challenged, and now peer review, collaboration, and publishing are permitted, but only with a license.

Of course, the embargo contributes greatly to the economic woes of Cuba, and therefore indirectly to habitat destruction, the primary cause of the decline of the IBWO. Although there is still a great deal of unexplored habitat in eastern Cuba, Lammertink was pessimistic about the availability of enough suitable habitat for IBWO in the regions he explored.  Logging and bauxite mining have claimed a lot of it, a situation that may have been slowed or prevented if only the economic situation in Cuba were better.

For decades, the single question, "What if?" kept our hopes alive that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker might still exist.  Despite their many handicaps, Cuban biologists are still discovering new species and rediscovering ones previously thought extinct. What if we could put aside our tired political differences and help them? What if the possibility that a small population still exists in Cuba was worth as much as a single bird in Arkansas?  What if we could look for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Cuba? What if?

Comments

[Mark O'Brien]

Yes, we are back in the USSR - United States of Senseless Restrictions. I could not agree more with you. The bastion of democracy has shown the world how small-minded, mean-spirited and anti-democratic the Bush administration is. Granted, the stupid embrago goes back a long time, and has been championed by ill-informed ex-pats from Cuba. However, this is the mouse that roared. We befriend regimes much more oppressive than Cuba (hello, Pince Sauud, how ya doin' today?), and had the US merely recognized that Cuba has had a right to self-determination instead of wanting it back as its lost mafia playground, perhaps Cuba would have been a model for the Caribbean. Instead, the US policies have hurt the people there, and really made Castro the man he is.
I suppose if Cuba had oil, things would be different. What needs to happen is for someopne with some common sense to advance a bill to put an end to this stupid example of a policy that makes the US look dumb and dumber...

[bob]

I will find the Woodpecker in January -- and bring him home with me. Put an end to all this nonsense.

[Brad Fisher]

Yes, all hail communism. Good day comrades. Not really. There are compelling reasons to end the embargo, but we aren't responsible for Castro's reign. Ever hear of the actual USSR.

But seriously, hopefully they maintain a population of Ivory bills. That seems to be the only redeeming quality of Marxist states, the tight restrictions on life produce safe areas for wildlife.