Lost Woodpeckers & other oddities

Update time on the Mid-South's(that's what we TV types call the Greater Memphis area) most famous elusive celebrity since Elvis. An independent radio team has put together a fun story for NPR's All Things Considered on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker hype going on in Brinkley, Arkansas. You can get to the story on NPR, and as an added bonus there's even a song about the woodpecker!
If you've been getting any updates from The Nature Conservancy you know that TNC is using the discovery of the woodpecker as a major fundraising tool. Our local alternative weekly, the Memphis Flyer has a good article (it won't be online until this weekend) out this week on why TNC deserves a good deal of the credit for the discovery.... describing how TNC Arkansas state director Nancy DeLamar spent six years working to preserve the area the bird was found in, and even coming up with the name for the area, the "Big Woods" (which the article notes is a lot better than the previously proposed White River-lower Arkansas River megasite). But one detail I didn't know was that before TNC even had a state office in Arkansas, a coalition of environmentalists and local duck hunters were able to stop a Corps of Engineers plan that would have drained the swamp. Working together, they saved a bird they didn't even know existed.