WASHINGTON (AP) — The red-cockaded woodpecker, an iconic bird in southeastern forests, has recovered enough of its population to be downlisted from an endangered species to a threatened one, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday.
"The downlisting of the red-cockaded woodpecker marks a significant milestone in our nation’s commitment to preserving biodiversity,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement. At one point in the 1970s, the red-cockaded woodpecker population had dipped as low as 1,470 clusters — or groups of nests, wildlife officials said. Today, there are an estimated 7,800 clusters.
“It’s an amazing bird that has an unusual communal nesting structure,” said Will Harlan of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “All nests usually cluster in the same tree, and the birds stick together as a family unit.” Red-cockaded woodpeckers are habitat specialists that nest only in mature long-leaf pine forests, building nests in cavities of living trees partially hollowed out by a fungus.
Long-leaf pine forests once spanned much of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal regions, from New Jersey to Texas, but logging and development in the region reduced that to only 3% of this original habitat today, said Harlan. Red-cockaded woodpeckers were one of the first species designated as “endangered” in the United States in 1970, and the birds received full protections with passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Since then, habitat.
