The Ivory-billed woodpecker symbolizes the struggles of the American environment. On page 68 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states that "one byproduct of human habitat modification is that we are losing specialist and finding ourselves more and more sharing the planet with only generalists, such as cockroaches, rats, and pigeons." We are increasingly losing beautiful species that live in only certain habitat conditions. Our world is becoming less and less diverse. With this declining diversity, comes a decline in unique beautiful species. The ivory-billed woodpecker symbolized everything that our environment has lost due to issue such as deforestation and overutilization, but it also represents hope that we may still be able to save some of the species we have lost. Along with other examples like the Louisiana brown pelican, the ivory-billed woodpecker can be an example of how human actions can also reverse the mistakes of the past.