How the Military Helped Bring Back the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker

The red-cockaded woodpecker has been listed as endangered for more than half a century, but that could soon change.

In the final months of the Trump administration, federal wildlife officials started a process to downgrade its status to "threatened."

Conservation groups say science doesn't support the move, and that it could undermine gains made in part with the help of unusual public-private partnerships that have taken decades of work and millions of dollars.

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the bird's population is stable now, and that legally its status should be changed.

"It no longer meets that definition of endangered species, you know, that it is threatened by extinction basically," said Kristi Young, deputy manager for the service's Division of Conservation and Classification. "That's because the conditions have really improved."

Young helped develop the proposal to downlist the woodpecker.

One thing both sides agree on: For a bird that once threatened some of the nation's largest and most powerful military bases, the woodpecker's survival relies on an unusual amount of human help.

https://www.wunc.org/2021-03-02/how-the-military-helped-bring-back-the-red-cockaded-woodpecker