Red-cockaded Woodpecker Wars

This issue was growing and growing with time; the Army was considering going to Congress for an exemption to the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), The Nature Conservancy and the Army sat down to find common ground and a solution to this issue. Even though the first meetings required many “cooling off” breaks, the constant communication, listening and trying to understand each other’s work, finally paid off.

The first program that emerged from this partnership is called the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI), which allowed the army to fund protection off base in the surrounding region. When a woodpecker leaves its nest, it generally flies short distances from tree to tree. They have difficulty crossing a treeless area of more than about 200 meters. Hence, there is a need to create corridors of forest for them to move from spot to spot. That’s why TNC identified important properties that would create these corridors and fill in the gaps between the eastern population of woodpeckers at Fort Liberty and the western population at Camp Mackall (another Army training facility) and Sandhills Game Land. Once these properties were identified, with the help of the Army and USFWS, we purchased the land and protected it.

Another important program that came out of this partnership is the Safe Harbor program, which allows non-federal property owners to enter into a voluntary agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect a species listed under the Endangered Species Act. These agreements remove uncertainty for landowners who are trying to manage their land in a way that attracts endangered or threatened plants and animals. Property owners don’t have to worry that by attracting these animals and plants to their land they may face additional land use restrictions down the road. If their land management unintentionally kills or harms a protected species, they will not face legal action. The landowner may choose to return the property to its original condition when the agreement expires. “Safe Harbor is designed to build trust for landowners and give them security. It is a mechanism to assuage fears and concerns,” says Jeff Marcus.

The local population of RCWs at Fort Liberty was declared recovered in 2005—six years before the deadline set by USFWS, but the partnership didn’t stop there. Conservation and protection became part of the Army’s mission and this model that started in the Sandhills in NC has been replicated across the country. Longleaf pine across the southeast U.S. has grown to 5.2 million acres driven in part by this partnership. RCWs numbered less than 10,000 individuals in the mid-1990s, and today, there are between 18,000 and 19,000 individuals today.