The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker is starting to show signs of recovery after Hurricane Michael ravaged our area in 2018.
Hurricane Michael damaged nearly 113,000 acres of the forest when in hit the panhandle as a category 5 storm in 2018.
More than 24,000 acres were severely impacted.
One of the most significant results of this hurricane was the impact that it had on the habitat of the red-cockaded woodpecker, a species the US Fish and Wildlife Service had declared endangered.
Despite the damage, progress is visible on the forest and the results of the hard work are becoming apparent.
Work to stabilize the population of red-cockaded woodpeckers has proven successful, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service recently proposed downlisting the RCW from endangered to threatened.
The woodpecker excavates cavities exclusively in living pine trees; preferably old pine trees with heartwood softened by fungal disease.
Hurricane Michael downed over 1400 trees with woodpecker cavities; this created an immediate threat to the endangered species.
The US Forest Service and partners have since installed over 690 cavity inserts to serve as pre-fabricated replacements for the nesting sites that were lost in the storm.
In the spring of 2019, biologists were surprised to see that this had been one of the most productive nesting seasons on their records. Nearly half of nesting attempts were found in the cavity inserts.
80% of the chicks that researchers banded fledged, and many established in other cavity inserts.
Biologists believe that the quick installation of the inserts minimized disruption and made the difference in the woodpecker's nesting success
The red-cockaded woodpecker were once common throughout the longleaf pine ecosystem, but the types of mature forests the species prefers have declined.
Today, the world’s largest population of red-cockaded woodpeckers resides on the Apalachicola National Forest.
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