The first confirmed sighting of an Ivory Billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in sixty years in the remote "Big Woods," of Eastern Arkansas has brought the species back from its long assumed extinction, which Audubon Society ornithologist Frank Gill called "kind of like finding Elvis." A male was videotaped last year, finally confirming reports of sightings--and hearings of the bird's distinctive drumming. The Ivory Billed Woodpecker lives in swampy forests and its disappearance coincided with the disappearance of the virgin forests in the southeastern US.

The Bush administration immediately all but claimed credit for the Bird's miraculous reappearance. Interior Secretary Gail Norton promised to "appoint the best talent in the US Fish and Wildlife Service and local citizens to develop a Corridor of Hope Cooperative Conservation Plan to save the Ivory-billed woodpecker."

But just in case anyone got wild ideas, the Department of Agriculture made sure to tone down the enthusiasm. "Finding a species once thought extinct is a rare and exciting event, and USDA is pleased to be a partner in the effort to protect Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers. At the same time, we understand that habitat conservation can impact landowners. That's why we're going to reach out to work cooperatively with stakeholders so we can all share in the joy of this discovery."

A week later, the Bush Administration spread some of that joy when it announced on May 5th that it was stripping protection from "60 million acres of America's most pristine public forests, exposing them to logging, road building, and other development," according to the Audubon Society.

"To protect woodpeckers without protecting trees would be a neat trick," said Bob Perciasepe, Chief Operating Officer of the National Audubon Society. "America was ready to unite around the inspiring story of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, and to support a broader conservation agenda for the nation's birds and wildlife. Americans' hopes have again been deflated by an Administration that consistently attacks the environment and has no intention of protecting America's forests." Uh, yeah.--Troy Skeels

In a topically, but not Zoologically, related development, the Nature Conservancy announced that three snail species, also declared extinct, had been located in the Coohsa and Cahaba rivers in Alabama. The three, the Cobble Elimia, the Nodulose Coosa River Snail and Cahaba Pebblesnail were discovered along parts of the rivers where patches of original habitat remains more or less intact. No word yet if the Bush administration plans to grind that habitat into hamburger anytime soon. In the meantime, we ought to welcome our sibling species back into the limelight, or express our regrets that they've been smoked out of hiding, whichever the case may be.--TS

Human Rights Watch, on April 24, called for the United States to "name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse." In a report called "Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the US Abuse of Detainees" (http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0405/) HRW reports that "evidence is mounting that high-ranking US civilian and military leaders--including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top US commander in Iraq, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba--made decisions and issued policies that facilitated serious and widespread violations of the law. The circumstances strongly suggest that they either knew or should have known that such violations took place as a result of their actions. There is also mounting data that, when presented with evidence that abuse was in fact taking place, they failed to act to stem the abuse."

The report recommended to the US Attorney General that he "appoint a special counsel to investigate any US officials--no matter their rank or position--who participated in, ordered, or had command responsibility for war crimes or torture, or other prohibited ill-treatment against detainees in US custody." HRW says the Special Counsel is needed because "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who, as head of the Department of Justice, sits atop the prosecutorial machinery, was himself deeply involved in the policies leading to these alleged crimes, and thus may not only have a conflict of interest but also he, himself, may have a degree of complicity in those abuses." The Report recommended that Congress "Create a special commission, along the lines of the 9/11 commission, to investigate the issue of prisoner abuse."--TS