USDA Forest Service welcomes red-cockaded woodpeckers to their new home
(Montgomery, AL ) Oct. 25, 2024 ----The U.S. Forest Service prepared a home in the Tuskegee National Forest for five pairs of red-cockaded woodpeckers (RCW) that were recently translocated from the Apalachicola National Forest located in Sopchoppy, Florida. According to Tuskegee District Ranger Scott Layfield, Forest Service employees accomplished critical ground preparation for the special delivery mission to help the red-cockaded woodpecker make a comeback in the Tuskegee National Forest.
“Although there have been a couple of individual sightings, red-cockaded woodpeckers have been functionally extirpated from the Tuskegee National Forest since the late 1970s,” says Ryan Shurette, forest biologist, for the National Forests in Alabama. “One of the main reasons for the decline across the entire Southeast was the loss of open, frequently burned, mature pine forest,” says Shurette. Over the years, red-cockaded woodpecker numbers dwindled because of this habitat decline. Now thanks to active forest management practices including timber thinning and increased prescribed burns on the Tuskegee District over the past couple of decades, the habitat has improved to the point where we can reintroduce the woodpecker back to its forest. According to Shurette there are a few phases of the special mission of translocation.
Phase 1 – Preparing the habitat (home)
The first and most important phase is getting the habitat ready. This step can take many years depending on the age and structure of the forest. Red-cockaded woodpeckers require open stands of large pine trees for foraging, roosting, and nesting habitat. Thinning, prescribed burning, and hardwood midstory removal are required. The treatment involves clearing some of the smaller hardwood trees and saplings with chainsaws to create open stands and allow herbaceous plants to establish in the understory. The herbaceous plants produce many of the insects that make their way into the pine trees where the RCWs feed. Raking and clearing brush, fuels, and debris from around the selected cavity trees protects them from fire when the stand is burned. The loose outer bark is scraped away from the base of the tree and a white band is painted round the trees to indicate where artificial cavities will be installed, and the birds will be released. Brushing, cavity tree raking, and banding were completed on August 28.
Phase 2 – Inserting Artificial Cavities
The second phase involves inserting the artificial cavities into live pine trees. On October 1, Forest Service biologists and technicians worked on the second phase of the preparation. Red-cockaded woodpeckers use living pine trees so that they can take advantage of the sticky sap to fend off predators. For natural cavities, a pine ideally needs to be old enough (80 years or more) to have red heart fungus that causes the heartwood to soften. Even so, it can still take a year or more for an RCW to excavate its own cavity in a live tree. Using artificial inserts, however, allows biologists to create a suitable cavity in a single day. The artificial cavities are basically hollowed out wooden blocks made of pine or red cedar, with an entrance in the front that mimics the specific dimensions of a natural RCW cavity.
Forest biologists climbed trees with ladders, chainsaws, and buckets of supplies. Inserts were installed at about twenty-two feet high. They each scraped the outer bark from around the cavity location to help discourage snakes and other predators from reaching the cavities where the future red-cockaded woodpeckers will hopefully take up residence. Not all the translocated birds are expected to stay around, but hopefully half will stay and begin breeding by next spring. Forest Service biologists and technicians carefully cut out an opening for each of the cavities to go in. They finished inserting the cavities by securing them with shims and putty. They also spray painted the outside of the boxes to blend in with the trees. The team inserted 40 artificial cavities in ten different areas (called clusters) across the forest.
Phase 3 – Translocation to a New Home
The third phase is the actual translocation of the red-cockaded woodpeckers. The Tuskegee National Forest welcomed five pairs of RCWs (five males, and five females) to their new home on October 23. The RCWs were captured from the Apalachicola National Forest located in Sopchoppy, Florida and transported approximately 213 miles to the Tuskegee National Forest in Tuskegee, Alabama. The birds were captured the night before they were transported. The capture occurred during evening roosting. After an RCW enters its roost cavity, a net is placed over the cavity hole. Once the bird flushes into the net it is then removed and placed in a transport box. Five pairs of birds were transported by vehicle the following morning after capture. The red cockaded woodpeckers were each placed in their own cavities at the Tuskegee National Forest. All birds were released at sunrise.
Red-cockaded woodpecker translocations are an important tool in conservation efforts to re-establish red-cockaded woodpeckers in areas from which they have been extirpated. Currently, translocations are critical in ongoing efforts to save and restore the many existing small populations. The success rate is approximately a little over 60 percent. Studies have shown that RCWs have stayed near their release site for at least 30 days.
The Forest Service will monitor RCWs for continuous sightings with hopes that the juvenile RCWs will adjust to their new environment.
The following Forest Service employees were involved in the special mission to bring RCWs to their new home: Tuskegee District Ranger Scott Layfield, Forester Tyresius (Ty) Paul, Forestry Technician Cedric Ellis; Forestry Technician Wendy Bonnell-Carter and Forestry Aid Mary Berkstresser along with the National Forest in Alabama’s Forest Biologist Ryan Shurette. Cavity insert team included Talladega District Biologist Art Henderson; Talladega Wildlife Technician Chris Raney; Oakmulgee Biologist Chrystal Tindell; Oakmulgee Biologist Bobby Cochran, and Oakmulgee Wildlife Technician SuEllen Cope.
Photos of three RCW translocation project:
Photo 1) A white band is painted around the tree to indicate where the birds will be translocated
Photo 2) The fuel is being removed from around the tree
Photo 3) Small trees and other fuels are being removed from the translocation area
Photo 4) Bark is removed before the white band is painted on the tree
Photo 5) Photo of what the artificial cavity looks like
Photo 6) Photo of a cavity getting inserted into a live pine tree
Photo 7) RCW released in the Tuskegee National Forest
View RCW translocation video here https://usda-fs.wistia.com/medias/lk2r6zz2fm
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