A $320 million woodpecker?

Wow… it should be called a gold pecker…
No, wait… gold is currently about $620/oz
This particular woodpecker is thought to weigh about 1.25 pounds, or 20 ounces.
That would make it worth $16 million / oz!

A kayaker may have seen just one bird, or maybe not…

A federal judge temporarily stopped construction on a $320 million irrigation project Thursday, ruling the changes could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that might or might not be extinct. The first purported sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the area was in 2004, but more than 100 volunteers and researchers who spent weeks last winter trying to find conclusive evidence of its existence came back empty-handed. Still, U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson said that, for purposes of the lawsuit brought by environmental groups, he had to presume the woodpecker exists in the area. Federal agencies may have violated the Endangered Species Act by not studying the habitat fully, he said.

So, they can’t go forward with the irrigation project until they find the bird, and finding the bird would stop the irrigation project…
And the irrigation project is 14 miles from the imaginary bird!

The Corps began building the Grand Prairie Irrigation Project last year, about 14 miles from where the bird was supposedly spotted. It suspended work in mid-March to keep from exceeding its budget and is scheduled to resume construction in October with the start of a new fiscal year.
About $80 million has been spent so far. The project is scheduled to begin delivering water to farmers in 2010 or 2011.

But, the project may cause stress to the imaginary bird…

The National Wildlife Federation and the Arkansas Wildlife Federation had sued the Army Corps of Engineers, arguing that the project would kill trees that house the birds and that noise from a pumping station would cause them stress..

But what about the stress to the farmers?

The pumping station would draw 158 billion gallons from the White River per year. Authorities said it is needed because the main aquifer beneath eastern Arkansas's soybean, cotton and rice fields is running out of water and could run out by 2015, causing economic hardship.

Hurting farmers to possibly help an imaginary bird is “unbridled arrogance,” but some don’t see it that way…

'The biggest threat to the ivory-billed woodpecker is the unbridled arrogance of the Army Corps of Engineers,'' charged Arkansas Wildlife Federation President David Carruth, a Clarendon lawyer. He also said “no one has proven that bird doesn’t exist…”

if we’ve lived 60 years without the bird, perhaps we could live a few million more…