After decades of intense work to save the red-cockaded woodpecker, a controversial decision to down-list the bird's status from endangered to threatened reveals both the promise and limits of conservation success.
As the setting sun paints the pom-pom tops of the longleaf pines at Sprewell Bluff Park, Nathan Klaus motions his team to move in. Nestling into the herbaceous understory of the pine savanna, Klaus, who is a senior biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, sets up a scope and waits for new red-cockaded woodpecker inhabitants to return to roost. After half an hour of sitting on a cushion of bluestem grasses, Klaus hears squeaks break through the heavy August air. Two small and seemingly plain woodpeckers land on the pine next to him. He grins as they stare at each other. “It was really beyond imagining that this place would ever support woodpeckers in my career,” he says.
The red-cockaded woodpecker has become a rare sight throughout its native range in the southeastern United States. One of the first birds listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1973, its numbers had plummeted to about 1,470 clusters of birds. In the half century since, conservationists have been working to recover this Southern icon—and these efforts are paying off. On October 24, 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced its decision to down-list the red-cockaded woodpecker’s status from “endangered” to “threatened.” It’s a cause for celebration in the conservation community. Yet, especially with recent regulatory changes limiting the scope of the Endangered Species Act, there remains an air of unease, too.
“Red-cockaded woodpeckers are known as a management-reliant species,” says Jeffrey R. Walters, president of the Sandhills Ecological Institute and Harold Bailey Professor of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech, who has spent the past 43 years researching this species. “You can’t just walk away.”
History of the Red-cockaded Woodpecker
Red-cockaded woodpeckers didn’t used to need human help. This black-and-white-barred bird—with its namesake red feather behind the ears of males—evolved in a Southeast teeming with pine savanna that spanned more than 90 million acres and was maintained by natural fires.
The birds roost and nest inside cavities that they bore into the trunks of old-growth longleaf pines, usually at least 20 feet up, making them the only woodpeckers in North America that make their homes in living pine trees. They wound the tree to cause sap to run, adding a barrier against their main climbing predator, the rat snake. It’s important that the trees are not only living but old, too. The tree’s diameter needs to be wide enough to support cavities. Older pines are also more prone to red heart fungus, which causes enough decay to make it easier for the birds to build cavities.
The birds need the trees—but they also need one another, typically forming family units of two to five birds. Families roost in clusters, forage together and work together to support eggs and hatchlings. Some juveniles remain as “helpers,” serving as caretakers for nests and hatchlings.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers are not migratory birds; they spend their entire lives locally. Helpers are always scouting for a potential breeding gap to fill, but their maximum range is under 2 miles. Juveniles who forgo helping typically stay one winter and then fly within 5 miles in search of their own cluster to call home. “They’re not going to cross a [30-mile] gap,” Walters says. Rarely, some juveniles will be what experts call “jumpers” that will fly as far as 18 miles in a day.
Once Europeans arrived in North America, things became harder for this specialized species. Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, settlers harvested longleaf pine trees for lumber. By the 1950s they laid roads, converted forests to farmland and installed dams to create lakes that act as firebreaks—along with other intentional fire-suppression efforts. Then in the 1960s, foresters “sanitized” the pine forests that remained, removing any trees inflicted with red heart fungus.
Red-cockaded woodpecker populations plummeted as the pine savannas disappeared, and many feared their extinction. At the time, enough other species were struggling to survive in these human-affected environments that the U.S. government felt the pressure to act. In 1968 the Department of the Interior listed the red-cockaded woodpecker as a rare and endangered species, and it was among the first birds to receive legal protections provided by the Endangered Species Act.
Not everyone, initially, celebrated the bird’s new protections. Military bases across the Southeast had unintentionally maintained healthy longleaf pine habitat by keeping forests open with uncrowded understories—the side effect of regular wildfires started by artillery exercises. In the 1980s, a researcher discovered that North Carolina’s Fort Bragg population of birds was dwindling. This prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to issue a jeopardy biological opinion that required the military base to recover its population of red-cockaded woodpeckers before it could resume normal training operations. The military initially resisted these regulations, and private property owners were fearful of new restrictions on their land.
Solving the Woodpecker Wars
At the time of these “woodpecker wars,” people in the Sandhills region of North Carolina regarded these federally protected birds with hostility. Some people with longleaf pines were even felling their trees to avoid having their land fall under the purview of the federal government.
“Fortunately, there were a couple of forward-thinking people who realized there was more to be gained by working together to solve the underlying problems that were causing all this, rather than fighting over the fallout from it,” says Jeff Marcus, longleaf pine applied scientist for The Nature Conservancy in North Carolina.
Conservationists sat down at the table with the military, and TNC joined these discussions as an “honest broker working toward a common end,” Marcus says. Each party laid out their different, even conflicting, priorities to find common ground. The first compromise was an idea that eventually became the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration program, commonly known as REPI. The plan was to allow the Army to contribute funds to the conservation of land around its bases to help meet their species population goals. For conservationists and endangered species, this meant more protected habitat. For the military, the program meant they could resume training operations, while gaining a physical land buffer from future nearby civilian development. Approved by Congress in 2002, the program has helped protect more than 1.2 million acres of land across the Southeast.
Habitat loss and poaching for the reptile trade drove this snake to threatened status on the endangered species list, but breeding and reintroduction programs are gradually bringing it back.
“I always talk about it in terms of co-benefits,” says Mike Hensley, who directs TNC’s Chattahoochee Fall Line Program. “We’re doing what we do for the benefit of the species—for the benefit of the forest. We’re also helping the military be able to complete their training mission.” As public support for protecting endangered species burgeoned, research breakthroughs also gave this woodpecker a boost. In 1989 scientists discovered that the woodpeckers would readily move into artificial cavities—boxes carved into the trunks of living pines and puttied into place—saving the birds years of work and giving them real estate that could be used for decades. Land managers began using prescribed fire once more on these landscapes, and second-generation longleaf forests grew large and healthy enough to support cavities and foraging. This allowed the Fish and Wildlife Service to begin woodpecker translocations in the late 1990s, in which biologists captured and moved select young birds to new suitable habitat. This helped maintain genetic diversity because it brought together birds that were otherwise stuck in faraway forest “islands.” Finally, populations started to rebound, and there are an estimated 7,800 red-cockaded woodpecker clusters across the Southeast today.
Success stories for red-cockaded woodpeckers continue to abound. Two once-separate populations in the Sandhills of North Carolina have been connected, enabling a moreresilient population. A red-cockaded woodpecker found its way into a restored forest at Peachtree Rock Heritage Preserve outside of Columbia, South Carolina, in October 2024 without biologists’ help. State and federal partners in Tennessee have announced plans to restore pine savannas in the Savage Gulf State Natural Area and translocate birds by 2028. Forest managers across the Southeast with redcockaded woodpeckers in their preserves continue to find natural cavities being carved into their pines. And TNC in Virginia is expanding fire-maintained longleaf pine forests in anticipation of climate change pushing more woodpeckers north.
Making Safe Places to Land
The Nature Conservancy supports dozens of programs to help red-cockaded woodpeckers across the South.
New Hurdles Ahead
Yet because they are now a threatened species, redcockaded woodpeckers have lost some of the “perks” of being listed as endangered. While endangered species get full federal protections, threatened species have tailored safeguards. Under the new regulations, in U.S. military installations, where about 15% of all red-cockaded woodpecker populations live, there can be exceptions made for killing the birds where they interfere with the base’s training or conservation management plans.
Also, federal funding for doing all this intensive restoration and management work has been decreasing. And at the time this article was being written, the Trump administration modified the regulatory definition of what it means to “harm” a protected species under the Endangered Species Act. Under this new definition, the destruction or disturbance of habitat for a listed species no longer counts as prohibited harm.
These legal and political pressures come at a time when environmental threats loom for this bird. Increasing frequency and intensity of hurricanes since the 1980s are affecting restored and managed ecosystems, often felling longleaf pine forests as fast as conservationists can grow and preserve them. Urban sprawl is a worry for land managers, where communities and prescribed fires don’t mesh. More than 80% of monitored red-cockaded woodpecker populations remain small and with low resilience. There is a real fear among conservationists that without political support and funding to continue vital work, red-cockaded woodpecker populations could backslide, and other species that rely on these habitats could become imperiled as well.
While protections for red-cockaded woodpeckers havechanged at the federal level, Colette DeGarady, TNC’s former longleaf pine forest director, believes that conservation of these habitats will likely continue. “There’s still a lot of good reason for land protection. Think about those co-benefits for people and nature, like wildlife corridors, clean water and clean air,” she says. Those are important issues at the state level, and they all require healthy forests. Also, federal, state and nonprofit workers have a legacy of dedication to this bird, and she expects that won’t just disappear.
Scientists discovered the woodpeckers would readily move into nest boxes carved into the trunks of living pines. ...
Hope for the Future
“It’s a good thing to recognize the tremendous amount of work that’s been done over the past 30-plus years with redcockaded woodpeckers,” says Joe Burnam, a wildlife biologist for Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources. “But we’ve got a lot left to do with them being a management-driven species.”
This is on Klaus’ mind back at Sprewell Bluff Park in Georgia. Klaus has spent the past 25 years leading conservation across 8,000 acres to restore the pine savanna for this woodpecker. Atop a bluff on the west side of the preserve, he looks to a plot that was burned some months before. But his team hasn’t thinned this patch of forest, and left alone, the trees grow too close together and hardwoods are already sprouting and vying for space. The area wouldn’t appeal to the red-cockaded woodpecker. Much like his peers across the Southeast, Klaus knows what his team needs to do to get this area ready for the birds. The playbook has been written and tested.
“I see red-cockaded woodpecker conservation as a success story about the way to recover a species,” Walters says. “You get a better understanding of the biology and identify the cause of decline. You fix that. Then you get people on board, because it’s really a biocultural issue.”
Even with these recovery boxes checked, questions remain about what comes next for this species after downlisting. After so much hands-on time, effort and funding, no one wants to see these efforts be all for naught. The years and decades ahead will become a fascinating case study about how to step back while continuing to support the recovery and ultimate resiliency of this woodpecker.
For now, Klaus says, “If it’s a federally listed species, it’s getting everything we’ve got to try to keep it going in the right direction.”
About the Creators
Kelsey Barnett-Fischels is a writer based in Huntsville, Alabama, whose work focuses on biodiversity and the environment.
Teagan White is a Pacific Northwest-based artist and illustrator whose work is inspired by the natural world.
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