The DoD/FWS team worked together to devise a novel strategy for ways in which Fort Bragg and other Southeastern military bases could contribute to regional recovery goals for the red-cockaded woodpecker. This approach started with understanding the amount of suitable or potentially suitable habitat on the installation, together with an identification of areas considered mission critical from a military training perspective. A specific and quantifiable “Mission Compatible Goal” would then be derived from these acreages, along with a more ambitious “Regional Recovery Goal,” which could account for woodpecker clusters on adjacent lands. Proactive habitat management would be applied to all suitable or potentially suitable habitat, and artificial cavities created to help expand the number of woodpecker clusters, and increase the bird’s population numbers.
New management guidelines based on this approach were adopted by the Army in 1996, and Fort Bragg was the first installation to implement an Endangered Species Management Plan under those guidelines. This set the stage for a substantial relaxation in training restrictions at the base. Experience developing and implementing those guidelines on Fort Bragg also informed an update and revision of the FWS recovery plan for the species, which was published in 2003.
With a growing number of woodpeckers using the base, the new management approach proved to be quite successful. In 2005, the population topped 350 clusters, a recovery goal that had not been expected for another several years. The increased numbers of woodpeckers on the base was sufficient to enable export of woodpeckers to properties off the installation to help in the overall regional recovery effort. Indeed, success in rebuilding red-cockaded woodpecker populations on Fort Bragg and other DoD installations in the Southeast helped set the stage for a FWS proposal in 2020 to downgrade the status of the species from “endangered” to “threatened” (FWS 2020).
Next Page: Pressures from Outside the Gate
Author
Bruce Stein, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Associate Vice President
National Wildlife Federation
Balancing Mission and Biodiversity at Fort Bragg Sections
Balancing Mission and Biodiversity at Fort Bragg
Longleaf Pine: A Declining Ecosystem