(migrations)

Red Alert

By Frank Graham Jr.

Alas, there was no Endangered Species Act, no Important Bird Areas program when ivory-billed woodpeckers still roamed the South's mature forests. Their nesting places could have used the care and attention now granted to woodland habitat in Apalachicola National Forest, the chief remaining home of the likely extinct ivorybill's little cousin, the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.

This 570,000-acre forest in the Florida Panhandle, the largest national forest east of the Mississippi, was designated an IBA in 2003. About an hour's drive west of Tallahassee, it's just a remnant, a survivor of the vast belt of pinewoods that once reached across the Southeast all the way to Texas. But of the estimated 12,500 red-cockaded woodpeckers still with us, about 2,500 now make their home in Apalachicola National Forest.

The birds are fussy when choosing nest trees. They nest only in old pines, preferably longleafs that are more than 90 years old and well spaced. Apalachicola provides at least some of those trees. Frances James, an ornithologist at Florida State University, has worked with the U.S. Forest Service and commercial foresters to find ways to produce wood without pushing another southern woodpecker into extinction. By using fire and selective cutting, they hope to preserve pines of all ages. James discovered that burning and removing dense, calcium-absorbing underbrush in pine stands leaves more of this essential nutrient for the big trees. The calcium in the pines moves up the food chain through ants and bugs to birds, eventually strengthening their eggs—and creating more woodpeckers.

—Frank Graham Jr.

For Information on Audubon's Important Bird Areas program, visit www.audubon.org, go to Birds & Science/Bird Conservation, and pull down to Important Bird Areas.

© 2005 National Audubon Society

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