Events

In April 2005, a report that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, supposedly extinct, had been rediscovered in the Arkansas swamps made front-page news across the country and around the world. The rarest of rare birds, the Ivory-bill is so spectacular that according to legend those who see it spontaneously cry out, "Lord God! What was that?" While for the majority of Americans this sighting came as a wholly unexpected piece of good news from the conservation front, to the inner circle of birders this was the latest installment in a very old, legendary tale of hope and survival. Once common throughout the southeast United States, the bird had vanished over the past century as its forest habitat was devastated, appearing periodically to reawaken hope for threatened species and environments everywhere. This film in progress will tell the story of the Ivory-bill not merely as a quaint piece of natural history, but as a story of faith and doubt, despair and hope regarding our relationship with the environment. Covering the tension between skeptics who regard the bird as fantasy and those with determined faith in its existence, the documentary will also explore the grass-roots conservation of the Arkansas outdoorsmen who most recently sighted the bird.