Expert Doubts Arkansas Bird’s Reemergence

An expert on the ivory-billed woodpecker is questioning evidence that purportedly shows the rare bird, once thought to be extinct, in the swamps of southeast Arkansas.

Jerome A. Jackson, a zoologist at Florida Gulf Coast University, is challenging a blurry video that other scientists say shows one of the birds, saying the four-second clip does “no more than suggest the possibility” that the bird still exists. Jackson has written a paper with two other biologists but would not discuss its details until the research is published.