Clarendon AR: Festival Fun

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Birder Bios

Cornell Search Team:

Sara Barker
B.A., biology, Colby College
School for Field Studies program, Kenya
Sara is the project coordinator for the ivory-billed woodpecker search and is a member of the search team. A research biologist in Conservation Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology since 1997, she coordinates monitoring and research protocols for threatened and declining species. Before joining the ornithology lab staff, she worked on recovery efforts for endangered birds on Hawaiian volcanoes and conducted studies of rails on a tidal river in Maryland. In the spring of 2004, she was involved with the initial search effort for the ivory-bill throughout the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge.

Timothy R. Barksdale
B.S., wildlife ecology and conservation, Northwest Missouri State University
Timoth provided video documentation of the search for the ivory-bill. A Cornell Lab of Ornithology research associate, he is president and principal cameraman of Birdman Productions, LLC. He has filmed more than 1,100 species, including 660 of North America's resident birds, and served as principal cameraman for Cornell Lab of Ornithology expeditions in Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Montana, and Cuba. His images have appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, Animal Planet and elsewhere. Before becoming a cameraman, Barksdale was a research associate biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Russ Charif
A.B., biology, Harvard University
M.S., neurobiology and behavior, Cornell University
Russ, the coordinator for the acoustic search effort, is a research biologist in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP). He has worked on studies of acoustic communication and acoustically based population monitoring in several species of birds, as well as elephants and whales. He has also been involved in the design, testing, and documentation of specialized software developed at BRP for analysis of animal sounds.

John W. Fitzpatrick
B.A., Harvard University
Ph.D., Princeton University
John is the co-leader of the ivory-bill search effort in Arkansas and has been the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology since 1995. Previously, he was executive director of Florida's Archbold Biological Station and curator of birds at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. He has led scientific expeditions to remote areas of South America and published extensively on tropical birds, including seven new bird species he discovered. Fitzpatrick is the author of Neotropical Birds: Ecology and Conservation, and he has been engaged in applying science to real-world conservation issues throughout his career.

Tim Gallagher
B.A., magazine journalism, California State University
M.A., English, California State University
Tim was one of the first three searchers to see and identify an ivory-bill in Arkansas in 2004, and he has returned more than a half dozen times to continue the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker. For 15 years he has served as the editor-in-chief of Living Bird, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's award-winning quarterly magazine. A professional wildlife photographer, Gallagher traveled through many of the ivory-bill's former haunts, searching for evidence of the species' continued existence and interviewing people who have had credible sightings. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Grail Bird: The Search for the Ivory-bill Woodpecker (Houghton Mifflin, July 2005).

Bobby Harrison
B.A., fine arts, emphasis in photography, Andrews University
M.S., media technology, Alabama A&M University
Bobby is an associate professor of art and photography at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, and is one of the first three people involved in the search to see and identify an ivory-bill in Arkansas. He has been an avid bird watcher and student of the ivory-billed woodpecker since 1973. Harrison, who is also an award-winning wildlife photographer, began searching for ivory-bills in 1995 in Florida, and he has since searched in Georgia and Louisiana. Since 1985, Harrison has published articles on birds and bird photography in most North American birding magazines and calendars, including Audubon, Living Bird, Birder's World, Wild Bird, Nature's Best, Bird Watchers Digest, Outdoor Photographer and others. Harrison, a native of Decatur, Alabama, resides in Huntsville, Alabama.

Martjan Lammertink
M.S., University of Amsterdam
Ph.D., University of Amsterdam
Martjan is a search team leader and is considered one of the world's experts on large woodpeckers. A researcher at Cornell's Lab of Ornithology since 2004, Lammertinck began to study black woodpeckers as a hobby during high school. In 1991 and 1993 he searched for ivory-billed woodpeckers in eastern Cuba. Other research includes surveys in Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental for the status of old-growth forests and threatened birds, including the imperial woodpecker. While earning his doctorate, he studied community ecology and logging responses of Indonesian woodpeckers, including the great slaty woodpecker.

David Luneau
B.S., electrical engineering, Rice University
M.S., electrical engineering, Georgia Tech University
David has, to date, during the Arkansas search, captured the best video of what many experts believe to be an ivory-billed woodpecker. A professor of electronics and computers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Luneau has been in charge of the effort to capture an image of an ivory-bill using remote cameras, and he has served as an advisor in other technical areas. Luneau was a member of the six-person Zeiss Sports Optics search team that spent a month in 2002 looking for ivory-billed woodpeckers in the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in Louisiana. With support from the Arkansas Audubon Society Trust, he organized and led a less-extended expedition in January of 2003 to look for ivory-bills in Arkansas' White River National Wildlife Refuge. Luneau, a native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, resides in Little Rock.

J.V. Remsen
B.A. & M.A., biological science, Stanford University
Ph.D., zoology, University of California
Remsen is the McIlhenny Distinguished Professor of Natural Science at Louisiana State University, and he also serves as curator of birds for the university's Museum of Natural Science. Remsen, who was an organizer of the Zeiss Sports Optics search for the ivory-bill on the Pearl River in Louisiana and who serves as a compiler of all ivory-bill reports in Louisiana, has assisted in planning the search for the ivory-bill in Arkansas. Remsen is also a member of the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list Committee. Remsen, a native of Lakewood, Colorado, resides in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.

Ron Rohrbaugh
B.S. & M.S., wildlife science and ecology, Pennsylvania State University
Ron is one of the project's co-managers and has served as the director of natural resources and visitor services at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology since 1996. Rohrbaugh has been instrumental in developing and implementing the team's search strategy - from writing search and study protocols to interpreting aerial photography and joining the searchers in their day-to-day work. Although not previously involved with ivory-bill searches, Rohrbaugh has spent years studying and searching for rare, difficult-to-find species, such as northern goshawks, short-eared owls and Henslow's sparrows. At Cornell, Rohrbaugh is taking the lead on developing an exhibit focused on the ecology and conservation of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The new exhibit will be a featured element at Cornell's Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. A native of central Pennsylvania, Rohrbaugh resides in Van Etten, New York.

Ken Rosenberg
B.S. Cornell University
M.S. Arizona State University
Ph.D.Louisiana State University
Ken, search team leader, is the director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where citizen-science and other monitoring projects focused on bird conservation issues. A long-time participant in the bird conservation consortium, Partners in Flight, and chair of PIF's international science committee, Rosenberg co-authored the North American Landbird Conservation Plan. He spent many years studying foraging specialization in Amazonian rainforest birds. A widely known North American birder, Rosenberg serves as co-captain of the Lab's renowned World Series of Birding team, the Sapsuckers.

Scott Simon
B.S., forestry, University of Wisconsin
M.S., forestry, University of Illinois
Scott has co-led the ivory-bill search and conservation effort in Arkansas and is the director of The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas. Much of his efforts have been focused on working with Conservancy staff on expediting habitat acquisition and restoration critical to the ivory-bill's continued survival. Simon has worked in ecological fire restoration for a dozen years and teaches courses and workshops in conservation planning, fire ecology, prescribed fire restoration, wetland ecology, wetland restoration and monitoring. From 1990 to 1996, Simon worked as a wetland ecologist for the Illinois Natural History Survey. Simon, a native of Chicago, resides in Little Rock.

Gene Sparling
Gene, an entrepreneur and naturalist, first spotted the ivory-billed woodpecker in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge that led to the extensive search in Arkansas. Since his initial observation in February 2004, Sparling has been actively involved in the search, serving as the project's co-manager and working in the conservation and land acquisition efforts as well as public and community relations efforts. Sparling, who began exploring the Big Woods of Arkansas in his kayak in 2003, has sought out wild and natural places throughout his life, exploring Arkansas' Ozark and Ouachita mountains, as well the Rocky Mountains, and Mexico's Baja Peninsula. A native of Springfield, Missouri, Sparling resides in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Elliott Swarthout
B.A., wildlife management, Prescott College
M.S., wildlife and fisheries science, University of Arizona
Since November 2004, Elliott has served as the supervisor for the field crew at the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. He has worked to implement search strategies by deploying full-time and temporary crews, troubleshooting logistical problems, and searching. A longtime birder and conservationist, Swarthout has, for 10 years, researched various birds throughout Arizona, Utah, and Sonora Mexico. From 2000 to 2004, he led fieldwork at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for a study investigating a bacterial infection in house finches in the eastern United States.

Peter Wrege
B.S., biology, The Colorado College
Ph.D., ecology and animal behavior, Cornell University
Peter has served as field supervisor for the crew searching the 160,000-acre White River National Wildlife Refuge. Challenges include the logistics of keeping nine to twelve enthusiastic searchers in the field, along with their canoes, johnboats, and equipment. The huge area of interest requires constant integration of the information about habitat quality and woodpecker activity coming in from scouting excursions and the field crew in order to make decisions about where to focus efforts each day. Wrege has been conducting field research on avian behavior for more than 35 years, taking him from Colorado to Venequela, Florida, East Africa, Panama and through the local woods and fields of home in Ithaca, New York.

Douglas Zollner
Douglas is director of conservation science for The Nature Conservancy of Arkansas. His work has focused on identifying critical habitat areas necessary for the continued survival of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Bird-walk guides:

Renowned birder and contributing editor for National Geographic Traveler and Living Bird magazines, author Mel White specializes in nature and travel writing. In addition to winning the 2002 Lowell Thomas Award for best environmental journalism article, he authored the National Geographic Guide to Birdwatching Sites and A Birder's Guide to Arkansas, among other titles.

Lance Peacock, West Gulf Coastal Plain Ecologist for The Nature Conservancy also be led bird walks. He is an expert birder and has worked at TNC for 20 years. The bird walks were on the Clarendon levee on the White River. This gave participants the unique perspective of seeing the birds in the treetops! Over 50 species were seen.

Photo top: The Indigo Bunting is just one of many striking birds to be seen on the festival bird walks. Photo courtesy of D. Menke/USFWS.

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