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BRINKLEY, Ark. (AP) - If the ivory-billed woodpecker is getting a "second chance," as U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton put it, then so is the depressed part of Arkansas where the bird was rediscovered after being thought extinct for 60 years.
The Brinkley area, where poverty is prevalent and agriculture the mainstay, has become a tourist destination in the year since Cornell University researchers made the announcement. The town is holding a celebration of the bird this week.
"It's been like a shot in the arm for us," said Sandra Kemmer, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce in Brinkley, a town of about 4,000 about halfway between Little Rock and Memphis, Tenn. "People are coming from all over."
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