Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fact Sheet

Bottomland Hardwood Forests of Mississippi Delta

April 28, 2005—The decline of the ivory-billed woodpecker is a story of habitat loss.

The ivory-billed woodpecker once ranged from Texas to North Carolina, from southern Illinois through Florida and south to Cuba. It dwelled primarily among swampy bottomland hardwood forests, preferring wilderness and the deep cover of old-growth woods. These forests provided the bird with an endless supply of dead and dying trees, where the ivory-bill found its primary food source of beetle larvae living under the bark.

Before European settlement, some 52 million acres of the Southeast were a wilderness of bottomland hardwood forests – forests that develop in the floodplains of slow-moving rivers and streams. These forested wetlands have their tree roots in wet soil and their trunks often in standing water. Nearly half of the Southeast’s bottomland hardwood forests were found in the Mississippi River Delta spanning seven states. Today these Delta forests have shrunk to less than one-fifth of their original 24 million-acre extent.

It is in these vastly diminished forests of the Delta that the ivory-billed woodpecker was rediscovered in Arkansas in 2004.

Mississippi River Delta

What remains of the bottomland hardwood forests of the Mississippi River Delta today clings to the rivers of Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. No other wetland system in North America has suffered such a tremendous reduction in area as have these forests now considered one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world.

A century ago, during periods of great flooding in some parts of the delta, an area 80 miles wide was inundated. It was the largest contiguous forested wetland in North America. These floodwaters built rich, wet soils on which an immense forest took root – “the big woods,” as William Faulkner called it, inhabited by wolves, panthers, bears, waterfowl and songbirds. These forested wetlands of tupelo, bald cypress, oak and hickory blanketed 24 million acres of the delta, interlaced with bayous, rivers, oxbow lakes and sandy ridges.

But in less than 200 years, that 24 million acres was reduced to 4.4 million scattered acres, cut down for timber and to make way for agriculture. After the Civil War, timber companies from the North and Midwest, where forests already were cut to capacity, bought hundred-thousand-acre plots for as little as 12 cents an acre. Laborers earning 50 cents a day manned the long crosscut saws that could fell centuries-old trees in an hour.

Further destruction to these forests occurred as rivers were contained behind levees and dams. The floodplain was cut off from the water, and trees could not regenerate in the drier soils. Some animals went extinct, as many believed the ivory-bill had.

In 1937, decades after much of the ivory-bill’s forest habitat had disappeared, ornithologist James Tanner documented 13 birds in what was left of the Singer Tract, a remnant of bottomland hardwood forest in Louisiana. Oak trees there were reserved for making sewing-machine cabinets, and as logging progressed, the birds’ numbers dropped. Tanner proposed turning the tract into a nature preserve, pleading along with the National Audubon Society that every forest clear-cut means “less dead wood, fewer insect borers and less food for woodpeckers.” But the Singer sewing machine company sold the land to a Chicago-based lumber company, and Tanner was called to duty in World War II. Wood that had sheltered the ivory-bills soon became caskets and ammunition boxes. When Tanner revisited the tract in 1941, he found only six ivory-bills.

The Big Woods of Arkansas

At 550,000 acres, the Big Woods of Arkansas is the largest corridor of bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the Mississippi Delta north of the Atchafalaya River. The Big Woods encompasses Arkansas’ remnant floodplain forests lining the Mississippi, White, and lower Arkansas rivers, as well as the Cache River and its main tributary, Bayou DeView.

Today, less than 10 percent of Arkansas’ original 8 million acres of forested wetlands remain – mostly small forest “islands” surrounded by a vast sea of agricultural fields. As forests continue to be broken into smaller fragments by roads, ditches, urban development and gravel mines, the number of plants and animals that can survive in those patches decreases. Water quality also is declining, as sediments, fertilizers and pesticides wash off cultivated fields with no streamside forest to trap and filter them.

In 1989, Arkansas’ remaining floodplain forests were recognized by the 49 countries of United Nations’ Ramsar Convention as a “Wetland of International Importance.”

The rivers of the Mississippi River Delta and the Big Woods are vital to the health of their surrounding bottomland hardwood forests. Without naturally functioning rivers, the ecosystem changes dramatically: The forests are no longer wetlands.

Dams, levees and irrigation projects along the Mississippi River have virtually eliminated flooding along the river’s mainstem, and tributary flooding has been reduced by 90 percent. Unable to disperse among the forests, water runs faster and stronger in straightened river channels, thus accelerating erosion. As riverbanks erode, forest vegetation loses its foothold and is swallowed by the river. Ultimately, the forest is cut off from the river entirely by steep riverbanks, and the risk of devastating floods downstream increases. In addition, steeper riverbanks and structures such as levees isolate trees from the life-giving power of the rivers.

For More Information About the Ivory-billed Woodpecker:

Found: The Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Learn about the timeline of the search for the ivory-bill, The Nature Conservancy's conservation efforts in the Big Woods of Arkansas, meet the search team, and more!
Live audio chat about the ivory-billed woodpecker with Phillip Hoose
Phillip Hoose, author of The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, discusses the recent rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
Where We Work: The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas
The Nature Conservancy's work in Arkansas helps protect and restore ecologically rich wetlands, threatened native prairies, caves, forests and waterways.
Places We Protect: The Big Woods of Arkansas
This 550,000-acre corridor of floodplain forest follows the bayous and rivers that flow into the Mississippi River and includes the most extensive example of natural shoreline along the lower Mississippi. For 41 miles, the banks on both sides of the river are lined with bottomland hardwoods, the habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker.
How You Can Help: Donate Online
Support our efforts to conserve this critical habitat for the ivory-bill and other species.
Ivory-billed Woodpecker News
See ivory-billed woodpecker photos, maps of the habitat of the ivory-bill, and other news and information about the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker.