Via NASA's Earth Observing System, here is a recent satellite image of the Cache River National Wildlife Regure, where the ivory-billed woodpecker was found in the last year. This has suddenly become a very special place.
The small white bar at bottom left represents a scale of 2 km. The caption reads, in part:
In this image from NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite, acquired on December 23, 2001, the dense vegetation of swampy bottomland forests, sloughs, oxbow river bends, and bayous in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge makes a dramatic contrast to the geometric checkerboard of farmlands. Ground that is bare or sparsely vegetated appears pinkish tan. The dense (but leafless in winter) vegetation of the refuge’s tupelo and cypress forests appears dark gray. When you look carefully (particularly in the high-resolution image), the forests are interwoven with swampy areas that appear lighter gray. A large swath of this gray swampy area runs through the narrow strip of the refuge that follows the Deview Bayou northeast of the large protected area near image center. Interstate 40 cuts diagonally across the southern part of this large tract of land.
Images like this emphasize how amazing the re-discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker is. Given the huge areas it needs to survive, how could it have possibly survived for over six decades in places like this? Hopefully we will learn answers to this and other questions in the coming years, and that the answers will help us to ensure that the ivory-bills, and other species, continue to survive.
UPDATE (5/2): Updated link under 'satellite image' above.