Last month, a rescue operation of sorts went down.
Bird experts from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg led an overnight field operation to capture eight red-cockaded woodpeckers in the Carolinas and relocate them to a Virginia section of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
It wasn’t a brazen interstate kidnapping, but a state and federal effort to re-establish a species that’s been nearly wiped out in Virginia by systematic logging of the old-growth pine trees the birds rely on for habitat.
In fact, by 2002, only two breeding pairs of red-cockaded woodpeckers were left in the entire state.
“Like, 95 percent of the Southeastern landscape was converted to short-rotation pine,” said Bryan Watts, director and co-founder of the college’s Center for Conservation Biology. “And that’s why the species is federally endangered.”
Several years ago, he said, wildlife biologists managed to establish a population in the Piney Grove preserve in Sussex County. Now they’re trying the same in the Great Dismal Swamp, one of the few places left in Virginia with mature pines, but which hasn’t seen a red-cockaded woodpecker in more than 40 years.
If the mission succeeds, it would also become the only population to date on public land in Virginia, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The mission
The major operation began on Oct. 22, when Watts and his colleague, research biologist Michael Wilson, helped capture hatch-year birds — four females and four males — from healthy populations in the Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina and the Palmetto-Peartree Preserve in North Carolina.
They identified the likeliest prospects ahead of time, Watts said, along with some backups. They chose young specimens that were likely already on the verge of dispersing to find new habitat.
Once the top candidates retreated for the night to their individual hollow roosts in old pines, Watts and others used telescopic poles with nets on the end to capture them.
The birds were tagged, placed in carrying boxes and driven through the night across the Virginia border. In the Suffolk portion of the Dismal Swamp, Watts and others climbed up old pine trees that had been prepared with artificial cavities, placed the birds inside and covered the openings with screens.
At dawn, the screens were removed and the birds flew out to explore what experts hope will become their new home.
Habitat limitation
The challenge of translocating this particular species of woodpecker is that its habitat is so very specialized.
Other species that are more flexible can live in a variety of dead trees, so they thrive in backyards throughout Hampton Roads. In fact, residents routinely mistake the more common downy or hairy woodpecker for the red-cockaded, which resemble each other except for the white blaze on the red-cockaded’s cheek.
But true red-cockadeds require live, longleaf pines that are not only old, but infected with a fungus called red heart disease that targets mature pines and softens the core for easy excavation.
Despite this habitat limitation, the species ranges throughout the Southeast, with its northern reach once extending into Maryland.
“Maryland lost them in the 1980s,” Watts said. “So now we’re the northernmost area.”
In Colonial times, he said, a significant population of red-cockaded woodpeckers likely lived south of the James River. But one of the first industries of the period was naval stores, which required pines for shipbuilding. That took much of the region’s old trees.
Centuries later, in the 1960s, much of Virginia’s commercial land was transitioned from growing saw logs for lumber to pulpwood for paper and cardboard that utilizes younger trees, he said.
“The habitat was increasingly fragmented,” Watts said. “A lot of that is growing back now, but most of the trees are 40 to 60 years old. This species requires 80- to 120-year-old pine.
“A lot of the landscape will be possibly usable by them in another two, three, four decades,” he added. “But not now.”
‘Bring this species back’
The center will monitor the birds in their new habitat, but not right away.
“We’ll let them settle in, in sort of a honeymoon period,” Watts said. “Then we’ll go down and see who remains.”
In late November, they’ll conduct a winter survey, said Wilson, and another in early spring. That’s when they’ll begin actively monitoring the tree cavities for the presence of eggs to detect any breeding.
At that point, they’ll step up the monitoring to several days a week.
Refuge Manager Chris Lowie said the operation was several years in the making and “illustrates the role that our national wildlife refuges can play in the recovery of threatened and endangered species.”
Translocation has worked out in Piney Grove, Wilson said, as well as in other populations in Kentucky, Georgia and Florida. But it’s anybody’s guess how many of the red-cockadeds will stick around the Great Dismal Swamp.
“To put a number or percentage on it is kind of hard right now, because it’s an experimental population,” said Wilson.
But even if it’s not a sure thing, he said, it’s still worth the effort.
“This was a species that took a substantially large population hit and decline,” said Wilson. “And it’s really our responsibility to bring this species back to a place where it can exist on its own without so much management effort as we’re doing now.
“It’s our responsibility to sort of keep the natural wildlife out there without making them go extinct,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to keep these things alive. And without our help like this, it won’t happen.”
Other partners in the operation were The Nature Conservancy, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the North Carolina Department of Transportation and J. Carter and Associates.
Dietrich can be reached by phone at 757-247-7892.
