If, as the Biblical book of Hebrews declares, faith is “the evidence of things not seen,” then Oakwood College professor Bobby Harrison is a man of deep faith.

For 33 years, Harrison, an art and photography professor who runs the media lab at the Seventh-day Adventist Church-owned tertiary institution, has been faithfully looking for a bird long believed to be extinct, the ivory-billed woodpecker. That search culminated with a joint sighting in 2004 that made global headlines when announced a week ago.

“I believed it, even though there were people who kept saying ‘no, no, no’,” Harrison, in a telephone interview with ANN, said of the bird’s existence. “This has been a journey of faith for 30 years and it paid off.”

Harrison, who is also an award-winning wildlife photographer, began his most recent and intensive search for ivory-bills in 1995 in Florida, and he has since searched in Georgia and Louisiana. Since 1985, he has published articles on birds and bird photography in most North American birding magazines and calendars, including Audubon, Living Bird, Birder’s World, Wild Bird, Nature’s Best, Bird Watcher’s Digest, Outdoor Photographer and others.

A native of Decatur, Alabama, Harrison resides in Huntsville, Alabama and has taught full-time at Oakwood since 1991, following nine years of part-time instruction there. He holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with an emphasis in photography from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan and a master’s degree in media technology from Alabama A&M University.

Last week, along with a team of scientists and researchers, Harrison’s name was listed as a co-author of a peer-reviewed article in the academic journal, “Science,” revealing that the bird had indeed been sighted, in the “Big Woods” of Eastern Arkansas. According to a statement from the Big Woods Conservation Project—a consortium sponsoring research into the ivory-bill and its habitat—the report comes more than 60 years after the last confirmed sighting of the species in the United States, and has, Harrison said, made headlines “in every major newspaper” around the world.

The statement notes the ivory-billed woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in North America, and “according to researchers, the species vanished after extensive clearing destroyed millions of acres of virgin forest throughout the American South between the 1880s and mid-1940s.”

According to a news release, the findings were confirmed in part using a video recording that Harrison made in the spring of 2004 and after a yearlong search of the Cache River and White River national wildlife preserves.

“The bird captured on video is clearly an ivory-billed woodpecker,” said John Fitzpatrick, the “Science” article’s lead author, and director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, in a statement released by the group. “Amazingly, America may have another chance to protect the future of this spectacular bird and the awesome forests in which it lives.”

“It is a landmark rediscovery,” said Scott Simon, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Arkansas chapter, also quoted in the partnership’s statement. “Finding the ivory-bill in Arkansas validates decades of great conservation work and represents an incredible story of hope for the future.”

Along with being the culmination of decades of study and research, the confirmation of the ivory-billed woodpecker’s existence has brought tremendous attention to Oakwood, and to Harrison, who now is fielding phone calls from media outlets and juggling television appearances along with his class work. But he says it’s a happy mix, given the importance of the discovery, adding that this has been a faith adventure.

For Oakwood, the international attention is a side benefit; the school is now part of the Big Woods Conservation Partnership, which in a statement said its “10-year goal is to restore 200,000 more acres of forest in the Big Woods.”

Harrison says such work is an opportunity for renewed stewardship where such care had been lacking.

“We simply, as humans, have not done our part in taking care of what we have,” Harrison said. “This bird could have been saved 60 years ago; it is a poster child of what we can do right now.”

More details about the search and the efforts to save the ivory-billed woodpecker and the Big Woods, can be found at www.ivorybill.org. Additional information about Oakwood College is at www.oakwood.edu.

—The Big Woods Conservation Partnership provided additional information and photography for this story.