NASA joins search for elusive woodpecker

From MSNBC:

Woodpecker_3 NASA scientists have joined the search for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct but recently sighted in Arkansas. NASA used a laser-equipped research aircraft to fly over the Big Woods area of the Mississippi Delta to learn more about the big woodpecker’s potential habitat. NASA’s aerial effort is part of a quest that began in 2004 after a kayaker reported spotting the woodpecker along the Cache River in Arkansas. Before that, there had been no confirmed sightings of ivory-bills for half a century.

In 2005, researchers published a report in the journal Science that at least one male ivory-bill still survived, but this finding has been challenged.

More here.