A Bird in Hand is Worth $27 Million?

August 24, 2007

 

Do you ever get the sense that we have some of our priorities screwed up? Case in point is the search for the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. Now, I love birds as much as the next guy but the hunt for Woody Woodpecker has gotten out of hand.

 

It started with a sighting of the rare bird in an Arkansas swamp in February of 2004. A kayaker posted his sighting on the Internet which drew the attention of ornithologists Tim Gallagher from Cornell University and Bobby Harrison from Oakwood College. They contacted the kayaker and arranged a trip to the same location. On the second day, they found what they came to see. A large ivory-billed woodpecker flew across the bayou in front of them and disappeared into the dense swamp. They set out across the mucky landscape in hot pursuit. After fifteen minutes of chasing the bird, Gallagher suggested they sit down and write some field notes while their memories were still fresh. “ As he finished his notes,” Gallagher recalls, “Harrison sat down on a log, put his face in his hands, and began to sob. 'I saw an ivory-bill,' he said. I stood quietly a few feet away, too choked with emotion to speak," Gallagher said.

 

Okay. A little overboard, if you ask me, but to each his own. I can't imagine crying over seeing a bird but whatever floats your boat. Two guys communing in a swamp over a woodpecker has no effect on me but what this has led to does. This sighting got all sorts of folks frothed up including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That led to the recommendation that over 27 million of your tax dollars be spent on researching the suspected habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker. $27 million! I'm not saying that perhaps we shouldn't try to save this bird if, in fact, it's endangered. What I'm saying is, it's a matter of proportion. Let me tell you something. People who cry over seeing a bird will spare no expense in such a venture. It's up to the rest of us to provide a sense of proportion.

 

I have a friend whose husband recently died from a horrible and incurable disease. Their family suffered with this for two years before he died, each day getting progressively worse. She told me of a trip they took to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. The guide there was telling the group how our government was spending billions of dollars to see if there was water on Mars. “Water on Mars?” she remembers thinking. Her husband was dying and they were worried about water on Mars? It certainly does give one pause to think about our priorities, doesn't it?

 

Of course, we can't accommodate every single person. Tax dollars must be divided in a manner that makes sense but how much more bang for our buck could we get for $27 million rather than using it to build a habitat for the wily and elusive ivory-billed woodpecker? Well, it could buy 135,000 window air conditioning units for the poor who have been suffering through this summer's heat wave without AC. That money could buy 900,000 new school books or over 14 million meals at various homeless shelters. It could pay for the tuition for over 4,600 needy college students or feed 170 average American families for 30 years each. We could spend that $27 million to search for a cure for ALS which, added to the paltry $15 million that's spent on research now, would almost triple the budget.

 

Or, we could chase a bird.