Yet, in spite of the climate changes mentioned in the previous post, a written-off species has re-emerged.

"Scientists have rediscovered one of the great birds of America, feared extinct for 60 years - a find hailed by scientists as being comparable to the reappearance of the dodo.

"The ivory-billed woodpecker, believed to have disappeared along with the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet, has been seen in the Big Woods region of Arkansas by at least eight people. The woodpecker was one of six American species thought to have disappeared in the past 125 years. The last confirmed sighting had been in 1944.

"A team of ornithologists and conservationists report in the online edition of Science that they have drawings and video footage of the bird's unmistakable plumage... The woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, lives in a habitat of mature and dying trees. It all but vanished as vast swaths of the southern forests fell to the axe and the plough in the 19th century."