If you manage to find an Ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), then you are in for a $50,000 reward!

The Ivory-billed woodpecker is one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, and it is found in the Southeastern United States, where it requires a huge old-growth forest to thrive. It was an uncommon sight in these parts a hundred years ago, and since then logging and hunting decimated their numbers until the last one was seen in 1944.

Since it has not been officially seen for so long, most ornithologists believe that it is in fact extinct, but there tend to be sightings of the bird few years or so by amateurs and professional ornithologists alike. Just like cryptozoologists search for legendary animals, some ornithologists search the Southeastern forests of the United States for this bird that it most likely extinct. There are yearly "hunts" for the woodpecker where lots of people go into the woods together to search for it.

This is the bird to look for. The original picture is in black and white, but this version has been hand colored to fit the description of the bird. Original photo by Arthur A. Allen, coloured version by Jerry A. Payne, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States license.

Find the Ivory-billed woodpecker and get a $50,000 reward

Many scientists and conservationists have not given up hope that there might still be a few individuals left in the wild somewhere, and a nonprofit conservation group called The Nature Conservancy has offered a $50,000 bounty to anyone that can lead one of their biologists to evidence of a living bird. So if you got a lot of spare time, going out into the wilds and searching for this bird might get you a lot of cash!

It might seem impossible to get proof of it being alive, but if you are able to grab a photo that can prove that it is in fact an ivory-billed woodpecker, then you might be in for the reward. Once you know where it’s found, leading a biologist to go there and find it will be a much easier task than searching large forests for it. You might even be lucky and grab a feather for some undiputable DNA proof!

The reward was originally $10,000, but an anonymous person donated another $40,000 to the conservation group, to be used as a reward to the person who can prove the bird exist.

It sounds really exciting to find a bird that is as rare as this one, but sadly the most likely outcome is that no one will ever find it, since it has not been seen for over 80 years. There is a huge debate about whether or not it is still extant (extant = not extinct), and both sides of the argument got both ornithologists from well-known institutions.

Why the Ivory-billed woodpecker (most likely) went extinct

In addition to not having been spotted for 80 years, there are other facts that point to the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker. We do know that it required a huge amount of old-growth forest to sustain itself. These large woodpeckers ate larvae and insects that were mainly found in trees that were currently decomposing. These trees were commonly found in all of Southeasters US until the timber industry started to log most trees after the Civil War.

Once the trees were cut down way before they had a chance to decompose, a lot of the food disappeared for the ivory-billed woodpecker, and this is most likely the culprit of their (likely) extinction. To make matters worse, each breeding pair of these woodpeckers needed a huge area to have enough food, and a single pair could easily use 25 square kilometers (roughly 10 square miles).

Thanks for reading!

If you want to learn more, check out the post at The Nature Conservancy. These are the guys that rewards the money to anyone who brings proof, so give them a click! If you want to check out all the different alleged sightings, then the Wikipedia article has a nice introduction with good sources. You can also find some information regarding their habitat over there. Thanks for reading!