Dear Chris,

Thanks a bunch for the note. Let me ask you something else. Have any of the recent teams for the Ivory Billed, Imperial, Bachman's, etc... taken advantage of the very highly sophisticated GPS guided mapping technologies to target very specific habitat that may have been missed by the "Well, we last saw them around here" methods?

I have been intrigued by the rapid advance in archeological surveys in the Levant becoming far more sophisticated, accurate, and productive in the last 10 years in particular.

In fact, I am willing to guess that these technologies are not used to their full advantage especially when it comes to locating last holdout populations of nearly extinct species in forested areas. Now, I am not necessarily holding out hope for the Ivory Billed or the Imperial, but to me the question is an interesting one.

Any thoughts?

Kai Schraml
thekaiser at earthlink.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Thompson [SMTP:thompcwt at dfw.wa.gov]
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 1999 9:13 AM
To: thekaiser at earthlink.net
Subject: Oaxaca...Imperial Woodpeckers -Reply

Unfortunately, I believe the consensus is that they are extinct. Allan
Phillips (before his death) and many others in more recent years have
run expeditions with the specific and exclusive goal of locating these
birds and have found none. I do not recall the last localities that they
were seen or that the expeditions explored.

Chris Thompson
Research Scientist
WA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife