Feds: Relax protections for woodpecker endangered since 1970

[douglas9]

The red-cockaded woodpecker, a bird declared endangered in 1970 and surviving today in 11 states' scattered longleaf pine forests, has recovered enough to relax its federal protection, officials said Friday. But not all wildlife advocates agree.

“The red-cockaded woodpecker has flourished to the point that today we can propose to downlist them from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act,” Aurelia Skipwith, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said during a news conference Friday with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue.

But Ben Prater, southeastern director for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, said nothing released to the public so far justifies the change announced Friday at Fort Benning, Georgia, one of 13 military installations working to conserve the cardinal-sized bird.

“We’re still short of recovery goals and certainly have not seen threats be abated,” he said.

Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the bird's recovery "a tremendous victory for the Endangered Species Act” and not the Trump administration.

https://www.chron.com/news/article/Feds-Relax-protections-for-woodpecker-endangered-15597040.php

[rampartc]

1. and what do they eat?

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/trees/southern_pine_beetle.htm

pine beetle infestations have intensified since the 1960s, when the woodpeckers became endangered.

i have never seen a red cockade woodpecker.

[csziggy]

2. I used to see them here but not recently

The land to the east was plantation land with many mature pine trees. Red-cockaded woodpeckers build their nests in live trees and keep the sap running below their nest holes to prevent predator snakes from getting into the holes.

About thirty years ago the plantation traded 1500 acres just to the east for a much large tract in Jefferson County. The new owners developed the land so many of the pines were cut and there are fewer mature ones left for the woodpeckers.

We could still have some on our farm - although the mature pines at the top of the ridge were struck by lightning and died, we have left the pines in the lower pastures to grow over the last forty years. Our neighbor to the north has a large stand of pines on his fifty acres, so there could be red-cockaded woodpeckers there, too.