After three consecutive summers of failing to spot the elusive Bachman's warbler, the agency has decided to substitute field research with a very strong hunch that the species is gone.
BATON ROUGE, La. — Bypassing the standard multi-year acoustic monitoring protocols required for delisting a species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that it has officially decided to just assume the Bachman's warbler is completely extinct.
The bird, a small, brownish-olive songbird lacking any distinguishing plumage or interesting behavioral traits, has not produced a confirmed sighting in the Atchafalaya Basin since 1988. Biologists noted that while standard operational procedure dictates setting up extensive camera traps across thousands of acres of deep marshland, doing so would require putting on heavy neoprene chest waders in the middle of August.
We could spend another six weeks trudging through waist-deep alligator mud at 4:00 a.m. hoping to hear a faint chirp in the reeds, but the general consensus in the breakroom is that it's probably dead.
The formal classification of extinction will remove the warbler from the endangered species list, freeing up an estimated $40,000 in annual conservation funding and allowing the entire Gulf Coast avian research team to reclaim their weekends. Several researchers admitted they had already stopped bringing binoculars on the expeditions, opting instead to sit in the idling Honda CR-V at the edge of the swamp while waiting a respectable two hours before declaring the habitat empty.
Officials added that the administrative ruling is final, though they noted that if any surviving warblers take issue with their new extinct status, the birds are welcome to fly directly to the Baton Rouge field office and present themselves during normal business hours.