The species needed large tracts of mature bottomland hardwood, where it stripped bark from recently dead trees to reach wood-boring beetle larvae. That foraging niche is narrow and disappears within a few years of a tree's death, so the bird required a continuous supply across a very large area. Industrial logging of the southern floodplain forests removed exactly that.
In 2004 and 2005 reported sightings in Arkansas prompted a large search effort, a video and published claims. The evidence divided ornithologists, with critics arguing the footage was consistent with a pileated woodpecker. No subsequent search has produced a photograph accepted as definitive.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing the species from the Endangered Species Act list as extinct in 2021, then deferred a final decision amid continuing dispute. The honest position is that the species is very probably extinct but not formally declared so, and the disagreement is about standards of evidence as much as about birds.