i am not a scientist

We can all agree that the ivory-billed woodpecker is a beautiful being. It represents in a sense the death of beauty. We, as humans, have destroyed its natural habitat, killed this bird for sport, and haven’t done anything to preserve this species, until the last couple of decades. Maybe it is “too little too late”, but from what I have gathered we have done everything to try and bring them back to life. In class we articulated the question of: Does the ivory-billed woodpecker still exist, or is it extinct? We looked at the evidence and it seems like the class has understood it to be a lost cause. I, on the other hand, do not believe that. It says in the case study one that, The Big Woods has 220,000 acres of bottom land forest and 40 percent of the forest is approaching maturity. They also explain that “If a few breeding pairs do exist, most of the conditions believed to be required for successful breeding and population growth are becoming more available to them”. We have the resources, we just need the means. All we have to do now is relocate and help this species survive. I want to believe they exist; I am not a scientist or anything close to it, but we are not doing this in vain. We are doing this to make up for our negligence.