ML161654
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Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: John Fitzpatrick, Gene Sparling. Timecode In: 00:02:49. Timecode out: 00:57:14. Notes: Ivory-billed Woodpecker search; Scott Simon also in this recording. Subject 2: (Interview). Subtitle: Sara Barker. Timecode In: 00:59:46. Timecode out: 01:06:16. Notes: Ivory-billed Woodpecker search. Subject 3: (Interview). Subtitle: John Fitzpatrick, Scott Simon. Timecode In: 01:06:24. Timecode out: 01:09:30. Notes: Ivory-billed Woodpecker search. Subject 4: (Sound Effects). Subtitle: Canoe paddling. Timecode In: 01:10:33. Timecode out: 01:22:33. Subject 5: (Sound Effects). Subtitle: Imitation Barred Owl call. Timecode In: 01:22:48. Timecode out: 01:23:31. Show: Elvis (Ivory-billed Woodpecker) Log of DAT # 1 Engineer: William McQuay Date: January 26-29, 2005 JP = John Fitzpatrick GS = Gene Sparling SS = Scott Simon SB = Sara Barker CJ = Chris Joyce Bill = Bill McQuay 00:38 - 2:40 Ambi Push off of the canoe and quiet canoeing with no talking CJ: off mic question about asking John Fitzpatrick to tell us about the first time you came here. 03:00 JF: I came down here only a few days after I had this amazing moment in my office, the kind of moment you dream about, when Tim Gallagher told me this story of having come down and seen this bird, which is an amazing story itself, a Gene Sparling siting, and I said to Tim, what are the chances that this thing you saw was not an ivory bill. And he said, Fitz. It was an ivory bill. And I said, well our lives are going to change. And a few days after that we were back down here, starting to talk with Scott Simon about the conservation efforts that had to accompany the science. And I'll tell ya, just the first paddle tough this with Gene leading us down through the place, that Tim saw this bird¿to sit with 1,000 year old cypress trees around you. And imagine my God this bird is still alive. What a feeling. [4:11] CJ: And when you came down and saw the kind of forest. The ivory bill woodpecker is very picky about the kind of forest it can live in. JF: Absolutely. That's been its demise. It was a bird that lived in the high big forests of southeastern U.S. The mammoth old forests with ten foot diameter trunks and 1,000 year old trees as they were dying, the bird was feeding on them as they were dying. We took away all those trees, so here is a place a little vestige that actually has some of that character. Some of these really old trees. Now the really classic old growth trees is fairly limited here, but the most amazing thing of all as Scott Simon and Doug Zollner pointed out the most amazing thing of all is that it's attached to this 500,000 acre forest that is being regenerated, so there's the hope right there. As we got in this water for the first time, you get this incredible feeling of hope, cuz, my god, there's huge forest available here. This bird can last for another few years as this stuff continues to grow back. It may make it. We may have actually not lost this gem of the American woods. [5:35] CJ: And when you got that call. People have been talking about finding and seeing the ivory bill a lot of the times. You learned to be a skeptic. Did you have any question, another false promise. JF: Absolutely. I've seen hundreds of reports of ivory bill woodpeckers, especially since we did our work in the Pearl River in 2002. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't have a rep[ort of an ivory bill somewhere. So I had seen hundreds of them. This one was different because mainly for the first time really a professional science journalist had gone down to follow-up a specific report that was itself very credible, and darned if he didn't actually see it himself. So a guy goes and follows up on a report and actually sees the bird, and this is a guy who's been searching¿. We're talking about Tim Gallagher, and his buddy Bobby Harris... (Notes truncated)
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Archival information
- Cataloged
- 17 Jun 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 7 Jun 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 17 Jun 2010 - Ben Brotman