![]() The woodpeckers work of carving out a cavity can take anywhere from one to 10 years - and they prefer old, living trees. It builds its home high in the Longleaf Pine tree, which can grow to 120 feet, something that can take decades to do. "A lot of people have been working on this for decades," he said during a recent interview that took place about 15 miles north of the city, in a pristine Longleaf Pine forest where the trees stretched their necks to the sky, and tall grass and shrub plants blanketed the ground the between them.Įngstrom has studied the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker for decades. Bernhardt's not wrong, said retired ecologist Todd Engstrom who works with the Tall Timbers Research Center and Land Conservancy in Tallahassee. The army and private landowners have played a significant role in helping preserve the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker’s habitat while helping the species recover. And that’s very, very significant," said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt during a recent ceremony at Fort Benning, in Georgia. “It’s a success story based on the tremendous efforts that installations like Fort Benning have played in managing their activities in such a way that has allowed the species to recover and come into a status that is no longer in danger of extinction. The tiny bird still needs a lot of human-directed help and the Longleaf Pine forests it inhabits are not free from danger. The bird calls the Pine Forests of the Southeast home, but deforestation and expanding cities have destroyed almost all their habitat. It has taken decades for the bird to recover, but it has - to the point where now federal officials are considering downlisting it from endangered to threatened.Įcologists and biologists warn the move may be premature. ![]() Back in the 1970s, their numbers were in the low thousands. Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers were one of the first bird species to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. ![]()
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