The case of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, a favorite case in all my environmental classes, has led me to wonder about the declaration of extinction. Before hearing about this particular confusion, I thought of extinction as the final word, an inarguable death sentence. The Ivory Billed Woodpecker has led me to think about the process of declaring extinction. I can't claim to know anything about said process, but I'm pretty sure it's carried out by humans. This brings up once again that we are a part of our environment, experimenting on our environment, and causing its demise, all at once. When you really think about it, how can we possibly know if such an elusive and mobile creatur, like the Ivory Billed, is really extinct. If some of them aren't, then that would be survival of the fittest, and the fittest would probably have learned by now to avoid humans at all costs. Although I fully and completely support the strict monitoring of species and public announcements about their status, this case, which I'm afraid is not the norm, has reminded me that we are only human, just another species just as capable of going extinct, and we should act as such.