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 ForestNorth America’s Forests: Page 3 A victim of this logging, the Red-cockaded Woodpecker is a small bird marked in black and white and named for the male's tiny streak of red on each side of the nape. These birds have very specific habitat needs. For nesting trees they usually choose old-growth pines stricken with red heart disease whose soft wood permits easy excavation of nesting holes; the sap running down the trunk deters snakes and other predators (McFarlane 1992). Red-cockaded Woodpeckers nest in small groups or clans, requiring large areas of undisturbed forest. Each clan has "helpers," non-breeding birds that aid in feeding the nestlings (McFarlane 1992). These woodpeckers were the primary control of the southern Pine Beetle, a major pest in pine forests; after destruction of old-growth pine forests, which endangered these birds, Pine Beetles proliferated and destroyed other types of pines (McFarlane 1992).
Prior to the commercial logging of the early 20th century, these woodpeckers may have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Nineteenth century records exist of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers as far north as northern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania, and west to Missouri (Jackson 1994). Gradually, their range shrank as pine forests were destroyed; by 1946 the species was gone from Missouri, and by 1976 from Maryland (Jackson 1994). Populations in Tennessee declined to a single bird by 1992, and they disappeared from northern Mississippi in 1977; Kentucky and Virginia have only a few family groups (Jackson 1994). In the Southeast, clans became rare and widely separated from one another as millions of acres of old-growth pine were logged. When listed on the Endangered Species Act in 1968, programs to prevent its extinction were launched. Inbreeding of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers is apparently occurring in populations isolated by forest fragmentation (Jackson 1994). Some females have been physically translocated to isolated groups without females to counteract this problem (Jackson 1994). Nest holes have been artificially created, and existing nest holes have been modified with steel plates, restricting the size of the opening to prevent predators and larger birds from entering the nest hole (Jackson 1994).
The problem of declining habitat remains, however, and some conservation organizations, including the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, have successfully taken the Forest Service to court concerning their replanting policies, obtaining court orders mandating replanting with Longleaf Pine to benefit the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. At present, only about 30 known clans remain, with South Carolina and Florida having the largest numbers; the entire population of the Red-cockaded Woodpecker may not exceed 7,400 birds (Collar et al. 1994).
One haven for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker is Eglin Air Force base, located on the Florida panhandle. This 460,000-acre base preserves the world's largest remnant of Longleaf Pine forest, which occupies 320,000 acres of the base (Stevens 1996); 10,000 acres of this forest are the largest remaining old-growth Longleaf Pine in the world, with many 400-year-old trees (Biondo 1997). The Nature Conservancy has spent years conducting biological surveys and has discovered that more than 90 rare or imperiled species, including a salamander new to science, inhabit the base (Biondo 1997). Eglin protects 1,200 plant species, with numerous threatened species among these. Military activities are carried out as carefully as possible, and the base employs a full-time chief of natural resources with a staff of 25 (Biondo 1997).
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