Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Foundation

Week 15 Adopt-A-Species Assignment

By: April Ivy

Dear Chairperson,

I am a scientist from the Save the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Foundation, and am writing you this letter to ask for your help with the funding of an experiment to help save this animal. The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker can be found in the forest-swampy regions of Arkansas. This area of Arkansas helps to support the economy, whether it is with the tearing down of trees to make paper, or the clearing of land to build on to them. After looking into these animals’ surroundings, I have been able to see how the ecosystem is affected, and how the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is affected by the change in their environment.

Unfortunately due to the increasing of the human population, this bird is getting closer to being extinct because of the destruction of it’s habitat to build more homes and or businesses. I believe that if we could come up with an experiment that could possibly help the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker to stay alive longer, we would not only be helping them but also be helping the eco-system.

Proposed Experiment: Will the extinction of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker cause a decrease in the production of the larvae?

I propose in this experiment that we take a small portion of the Arkansas wooded area, and mark it somehow and not let the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker to feed on the larvae that they would normally eat. I think that this will show how the destruction of the woods is going to affect the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in the long run. The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker may not know what to do if they are not able to get to the food that they have fed on for so long. I also wonder if they would be able to adapt to a different type of environment, and if so what kind of environment it would be. I believe that this experiment would need to take place for a period of at least 2 months, in order to see the actual results and be able to compare them to other experiments. The control group would definantly be one male and one female bird. I believe that after this experiment it would show just what would happen if this precious bird were to go extinct, it would also be able to use in further research of this bird.

I hope that you take all this information into consideration when you read over my proposal. I believe that this bird is already so close to be extinct it isn’t going to take much longer unless someone does something about it. Please think about this when reviewing my proposal and thank you for your support of the Save the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Foundation.

Thanks Again,

April Ivy

Ecosytem Services. No Date. What are Ecosystem services?

http://www.ecosystemservicesproject.org/html/overview/index.htm

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ivory-billed_woodpecker