Woodpecker Highlights New Species

Highland Park native Scott Simon is one of the heroes behind the effort to save the ivory-billed woodpecker. A revealing profile demonstrates other species are being discovered too.

"A boy who played in Highland Park’s ravines now co-directs The Nature Conservancy of Arkansas efforts to save a species once thought to be extinct," writes reporter Kenneth Patchen in the Highland Park News.

At a presentation mid-week at Chicago’s Field Museum, Scott D. Simon, 38, and his associates noted the progress taking place with their ivory-billed woodpecker conservation work. Simon added: "This year we found three species that were not previously known to science." These include Pelton’s rose gentian (a new plant species), a new freshwater shrimp, and a new type of cave crayfish.

The search for and discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker has opened many eyes to more finds to be made, and habitats that must be preserved.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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