Abita Creek Flatwoods Preserve

The Nature Conservancy provides a safe harbor for red-cockaded woodpeckers.

During hurricane season, even birds need to have plans for weathering a storm. Red-cockaded woodpeckers are listed threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and The Nature Conservancy is actively supporting habitat restoration for the birds across the South.

In Louisiana, TNC has installed nest boxes in the main trunks of longleaf pines for red-cockaded woodpeckers at its Abita Creek Flatwoods Preserve in coordination with Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Safe Harbor program. While the birds are not currently present on the preserve, “hopefully, the nest boxes would act like an emergency weigh station of sorts for birds impacted by a theoretical storm,” says Will deGravelles, TNC’s Louisiana director of land protection and stewardship.

Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Lacombe, which is located near the preserve, hosts nests of red-cockaded woodpeckers. If a hurricane damaged the nesting habitat at the wildlife refuge, TNC’s nest boxes at Abita Creek could be “decent habitat as a short-term emergency place” for the birds, adds deGravelles. Although most of the preserve’s longleaf pines are too young and small at this stage to host red-cockaded woodpeckers (which require large tracts of mature pines in open canopies), the habitat would allow time for new artificial nest boxes to be re-installed at Big Branch or at other unimpacted locations such as DeSoto National Forest, Homochitto National Forest or Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge.

Also, TNC’s Fort Polk Buffer Preserve was established in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense specifically to protect land around the military base and Kisatchie National Forest, and to restore red-cockaded woodpecker habitat in the area.

These woodpeckers have “very narrow habitat requirements,” according to the LDWF Safe Harbor Program. “They are the only southeastern woodpecker to excavate their roost and nest cavities exclusively in live pine trees. They require pines at least 60 years old but prefer 80- to 100-year-old pines infected with red heart fungus. This species cannot persist in the long-term without suitable cavity trees and adequate foraging habitat.”

TNC is protecting and restoring longleaf pine habitat on its North Shore preserves, including Abita Creek Flatwoods, Talisheek and Lake Ramsey, with the hope that one day the woodpeckers may permanently nest there. “We have good habitat at Abita Creek in terms of savanna herbaceous ground cover and openness,” says deGravelles, but “in most places we don’t have enough old trees across enough acres to warrant a long-term, permanent cluster (of the birds) as of right now.”

TNC’s is also restoring CC Road Preserve in Allen Parish “with an eye towards recovering a fully functioning, biodiverse longleaf pine system that could support red-cockaded woodpeckers and other species found in this habitat,” says Seth Blitch, TNC’s director of conservation in Louisiana.

Longleaf pine habitats thrive with prescribed fire, so TNC periodically conducts controlled burns at these preserves. So far this year, TNC has burned 1,689 acres across Louisiana.

LDWF’s Safe Harbor Program encourages private landowners to manage their pine timberlands for the benefit of red-cockaded woodpeckers. “Through this program, private and other non-federal landowners enter into Safe Harbor Management Agreements with LDWF, committing to management activities to enhance, restore, or maintain habitat, contributing to the recovery of the red-cockaded woodpecker,” according to the program’s website. “The management activities associated with LDWF’s Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Safe Harbor Program benefit a host of other wildlife species that live in mature pine habitat, including bobwhite quail, eastern wild turkey, Louisiana pine snake, and gopher tortoise, just to name a few.”