It has been nearly 80 years since the last widely accepted sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker. In that time there have been hundreds of other animals that have gone extinct — and scientists generally agree about those extinctions. But some researchers believe the woodpecker is still out there somewhere.
Steve Latta is the director of conservation and field research at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. He was the first author of a recent paper in the journal Ecology and Evolution that suggests that there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest the persistence of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Louisiana.
