Back in the “Black”: Red-cockaded Woodpeckers on Private Lands

Phil Spivey
Nongame-Endangered Wildlife Program - River Creek Office

Download the PDF version of The Citizen Scientist Newsletter - Spring 2006 (Requires Adobe Acrobrat Reader).

Red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) populations on private lands in Georgia are practically a thing of the past.  Entire regions of our state that once supported RCWs are now void of the species.  RCWs can be considered the poster child for endangered species in the southeast being very strict habitat specialists living in older pine forests kept in an open condition by frequent controlled fires.  Longleaf pines are the preferred forest species, but RCWs will use others like loblolly, slash and sometimes shortleaf pines.  This woodpecker tenaciously chisels out a cavity in a live tree, the only woodpecker in North America to regularly create cavities in living wood.  As a general rule, pine trees must reach 120 years old before gaining interest from RCWs.  Millions of acres of mature pine forests have been altered or converted to other uses since colonial times.  Following the Civil War, huge areas of the Souths longleaf forests were timbered to supply our growing country with wood.

Yet, there is hope.  In the 1920s, wealthy industrialists purchased large tracts of virgin land in the Red Hills region covering parts of Thomas and Grady Counties for quail hunting retreats.  These lands were set aside before any large scale land clearing took place and amazingly still stand today as the finest examples of old-growth longleaf pine forests remaining in the world.  Around 300,000 acres still function as quail hunting preserves today with about 10,000 in old-growth condition meaning the dominant pines reach 200-400 years old. The Red Hills supports around 185 RCW family groups, which is by far the largest population on private land.  Most of these groups are clustered just south of Thomasville towards the Florida line.

In 1994, the Georgia DNR began work on a Statewide Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for RCWs with goals of providing management alternatives and incentives for landowners supporting RCWs.  A major focus of the HCP is a Safe Harbor component where a landowner agrees to implement or continue positive management (e.g., control burning, hardwood control, uneven-aged forestry, etc.) on their land and in return get a break from additional legal obligations under the Endangered Species Act.  There are also incentives to encourage landowners to allow the creation of artificial cavities where needed or even start new populations where appropriate.  RCWs may take from several months to years to finish a single cavity, so cavities are a limiting resource and population declines can usually be linked to insufficient cavities.

To date, around 143,000 acres of mature pine habitat -much of it longleaf- are enrolled in Safe Harbor with assurances that it will be maintained to benefit RCWs and the entire assemblage of other flora and fauna that depend on this habitat.  Everything from indigo snakes, gopher tortoises, flatwoods salamanders, pocket gophers, Bachmans sparrows and fox squirrels to rare native orchids and pitcher plant bogs will benefit from these lands being enrolled.  Through the Safe Harbor Program the RCW population in southwest Georgia has grown by 29 surplus groups.  These additional birds are above the levels found on these lands before Safe Harbor.  In particular, 19 of these new RCW family groups are found on the Jones Ecological Research Center in Baker County where their population had declined to one single male in 1998.  Through Safe Harbor, a lot of controlled fire and the good land ethic of these landowners, RCWs&..and many other species are getting a fighting chance.