Paul Mense, age 10, of St. Bruno, Quebec, Canada, for his question:

Is the ivory billed woodpecker already extinct?

Early in the century, our two largest and most beautiful woodpeckers seemed doomed to extinction. Loggers were clearing their native forests. One of the threatened species was the pileated woodpecker, a 19 inch black and white bird with a vivid scarlet crest. However, he has managed to survive in both the U.S. and Canada, where new forests are replacing those that were stripped.

The larger ivory billed woodpecker was not so lucky. He depended on the big old trees that grew in pine and swamp forests around the Mississippi. In 1942, the Audubon Society selected this bird for the first study of an endangered species. Time after time, conservationists pleaded to preserve his native forests. But during the 1950s no ivory bills were seen, and bird watchers gave up hope. Then during the 1960s a few sightings were claimed, though some experts suspect that these birds might have been pileated woodpeckers. Our best hope is that a fees ivorybills still survive in swamp forests in Louisiana and eastern Texas  but nobody is certain.