The ivory-billed woodpecker recently went from near total obscurity to superstardom when birders reported a sighting of the believed-to-be-extinct species ... from a vast Arkansas swamp forest.

RALEIGH, N.C. (WITN) - After decades of conservation efforts, a southeastern U.S. bird is no longer considered endangered.

Far from being destroyed, a naturally burned forest harbors extraordinarily rich biological diversity, and there's no better flagship species to help us embrace that than the black-backed woodpecker.

“The red-cockaded woodpecker’s recovery is a tremendous victory for the Endangered Species Act,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The ...