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Down the River and into the Woods

Day 1: Piney Grove and the Big Woods

   

Nottoway River, Virginia
Nottoway River, Virginia 
© Daniel White/TNC

Piney Grove Preserve, Virginia
The author's daughter keeps an eye peeled for red-cockaded woodpeckers at Piney Grove Preserve. 
© Daniel White/TNC

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"There’s a woodpecker right there—hear it?” Raspy squeaks fill the air as a small black-and-white bird flits down to a pine a mere 10 yards away. “You don’t see too many of those guys at eye level,” Brian van Eerden adds, chuckling. “Maybe he’s come down to welcome us.”

This rare greeting comes courtesy of Virginia’s rarest bird—a red-cockaded woodpecker. Here at 2,700-acre Piney Grove Preserve, the Conservancy has worked since 1999 to restore pine savannas upon which the woodpecker depends. The results of this intensive management—thinning, prescribed burning, installing nest cavities—are apparent as we drive alongside an expanse of deep grasses spread beneath a canopy of towering loblolly pines.

Once down to two breeding groups, Piney Grove’s woodpecker population has bounced back to eight active colonies. Van Eerden, who directs the Conservancy’s work here and throughout the Southern Rivers area, has reason to hope for the accelerated recovery of this endangered species and its globally scarce forest habitat.

In September, the Conservancy completed a historic deal with International Paper, conserving more than 20,000 acres of forestland in Virginia and 200,000 acres in all across the South. A single tract known as Big Woods comprises nearly a quarter of the Virginia acreage.

Emerging from a park-like forest of mature pines, we cross through a gate into Big Woods and follow a loop through pine stands of various ages. We stop to look across a field of young trees, where Piney Grove rises up in the distance like a fortress wall.

“To capture the full contribution of Big Woods for the woodpecker, you have to look forward several decades,” says van Eerden. “These younger pine stands growing next to Piney Grove’s mature trees can become the future forest where red-cockaded woodpeckers forage and nest.”

At a minimum, Big Woods will secure the future of fire management at Piney Grove. However, its potential benefits—habitat restoration, forestry, public recreation and landowner outreach—are limited only by the availability of funding.

“Our hope is the state will allocate funds in 2007 to turn this into a state forest,” says van Eerden. “We look forward to collaborating with the Department of Forestry on a number of forest conservation projects here.”

Van Eerden adds that a great asset for both parties is the sheer scale, as Big Woods extends a conservation footprint across more than 7,000 acres. “Many critters evolved in big intact forests, and that’s where species like red-cockaded woodpeckers still thrive,” says van Eerden. “They won’t survive on five-acre lots.”

Next:  Day 2 along Virginia's Southern Rivers