With chainsaw, biological science tech Greg Boling installs an artificial cavity nest for a red-cockaded woodpecker.

“Because We Can”

(In this excerpt, I accompany Laura Housh, field biologist, and Greg Boling, biological science tech, on a field trip to install artificial cavity nests for red-cockaded woodpeckers.)

Why do this at all, I asked Laura Housh, a wildlife biologist at the Carolina Sandhills refuge. Why not let the RCWs make their own cavity nests?

“It can take them a year to make a natural cavity. Because the birds are endangered, if we lose one or two active cavities, it could compromise the family.”

But why should humans care about red-cockaded woodpeckers? Why all this trouble and expense?

“First of all," Laura said, "they are endangered and by law were required to protect them. Also, we’re the reason they are endangered. It’s our responsibility to make sure they can thrive in their natural habitat. I mean, why save an endangered species? Because we can." . . .

I love this time of year,” she added as we walked back to the truck. “The most satisfying thing is to install artificial cavities for recruitment clusters, come back the next year, and find RCWs nesting in them. That’s the best.”

Excerpt from "After the Storm: Homes for an Endangered Species"

In 1989, Francis Marion National Forest was home to thousands of mature longleaf pines and the world’s second largest population of red-cockaded woodpeckers. “In one night,” said Craig Watson, then the forest’s Wildlife Program Manager, “all of that changed.”

When Hurricane Hugo rolled over the South Carolina forest with gusts of 160 mph, it uprooted cypress and centuries-old live oaks. But longleaf pines, the trees into which RCWs most often dig their nest cavities, were hit the hardest. The morning after Hugo, only 229 of 1765 RCW cavity trees were standing. An estimated 63 percent of that forest’s red-cockaded woodpeckers--already an endangered species--were dead. . . .

Despite the loss of habitat, the RCWs had one thing going for them. At the Savannah River Site, where the population of RCWs had dwindled to 5, biologist David Allen had been at work on a technique to construct and insert artificial RCW cavities into living pines. . . .

Every year, the refuge is scouted for trees with possible red-cockaded woodpecker nests. (These woodpeckers, aka RCWs, are on the endangered species list and are the only woodpeckers to excavate cavity nests in living trees.) The trees are ringed with white paint; and before a prescribed burn, the ground fuel is raked away to a 12 foot diameter to protect the nests.

Excerpt from CHAPTER 3
from a talk with Ralph Costa, USFWS Red-Cockaded Recovery Coordinator

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are resourceful birds. For example, to deter their primary predator, rat snakes, RCWs drill resin wells around the entrances to their cavity nests. The wells leak resin, which coats the trunk to form a sticky shield against the snakes.

Because RCWs make their homes in fire-prone areas, though, I had doubts about this tactic. The cavity nests I’d seen were often 20 feet up the trunk. Sometimes higher, but also lower--as low as 6 feet. Coating a cavity tree with highly flammable resin in a fire-prone region didn’t seem like a bright idea.

“Picture the pre-Columbian longleaf pine forest,” explained Ralph Costa, Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Recovery Coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. “The trees were often 300 to 400 years old--huge, really tall. Because of frequent fires, the understory was essentially grass. De Soto [1540s] and Bartram [1770s] described those forests as prairies with trees. The bigger and taller the trees, the higher the RCW cavity nests and the farther the resin from the ground.” In extant old-growth longleaf forests such as the Wade Tract in Georgia “the cavities are 70, 80 feet up because they can be.” Before the old longleaf forests were cut, “it didn’t matter that there was sap on trees. The flashy fuel, the low intensity fires, the shorter flame heights--these probably weren’t an issue to the red-cockaded.”

Because tracts of longleaf habitat--like that of the Carolina Sandhills Refuge--are protected now, “someday the trees will be taller and the cavities higher than they are today. But until our pines get bigger, our fuels get lower, and our cavity trees increase in number,” he added, “the woodpeckers need our help. . . .

“RCWs are also an indicator species. If you have red-cockadeds, it’s a good indication that you have a healthy Southern pine forest. Some people argue that we’re investing all this time and these resources in single-species management. With RCWs, it’s easy to shoot holes in that argument. By preserving 200-acre patches of longleaf forest for the woodpeckers, we’re taking care of everything else that’s living out there.”

Much of the burning is done with a “ping-pong ball machine,” a curious rectangular steel contraption which drops incendiary balls from a helicopter into the burn zone. Officially known as the Primo Mark III Aerial Ignition Machine, the device is designed not only for starting burns but for fighting wildfires. In the Sandhills, “there’s good leaf litter for the balls to ignite in," said Fire Management Officer Terri Jenkins.

Four excerpts from Chapter Two
A Prescribed Burn

Excerpt 1: The Briefing

A weekday in early April, 7:30 a.m. I received a call from refuge manager Scott Lanier. Conditions looked good for a prescribed burn at the Carolina Sandhills NWR, and he invited me along. . . .

An hour later, I was with Scott at the refuge headquarters in the cab of a white 4x4 US Fish and Wildlife Service truck, looking at a xeroxed map of Carolina Sandhills NWR Compartment 17. . . .

“Today is a growing season burn,” he explained, “as opposed to a dormant, winter burn. Research shows that fire often occurs in the growing season. We try to mimic that. It helps curtail the oaks, which are sucking up nutrients from the soil and budding out. Our goal is not to eradicate the oaks, but to control them. Oaks are part of this habitat and provide mast--acorns--for animals.

“If we burn at this time, the fire will kill a lot of the oaks. We haven’t pushed the envelope, though, and burned in summer. You can really torch your pines if the conditions--moisture, fuel, and temperature--aren’t perfect.” . . .

The burn crew consisted of 6 men and 2 women--firefighters not only from the Carolina Sandhills NWR but from as far away as Savannah. Of these 8, 3 would be in the helicopter.

Excerpt 2: “We can’t strike a match without getting that son-of-a-gun signed.”

I shook hands with Terri Jenkins, a Fire Management Officer from the Savannah Coastal Refuges Complex and the helicopter’s burn boss. . . . In addition to herself and the pilot, a third crew member ran the “ping-pong ball machine,” a curious rectangular steel contraption bolted to the side opening of the helicopter and designed not only for starting burns but for fighting wildfires. Officially, the ping-pong ball machine is known as the Premo Mark III Aerial Ignition Machine. . . .

“The Sandhills are particularly adapted to the use of this system,” Terri said. “There’s good leaf litter for the balls to ignite in. The balls are used not only for prescribed burns,” she added, “but also for fire suppression.” A wildfire can be suppressed by starting a burn on a forest floor to consume the fuel before the wildfire can reach it. . . .

Later, back at the refuge office, I had an opportunity to talk with Patricia McCoy, the NWR’s accountant, administrative assistant, and dispatcher. Patricia is stationed in the headquarters, and her role in a burn is to monitor weather reports, obtain state approval to burn, coordinate communication between the ground and helicopter crews, and deal with a mountain of paper work. . . .

Excerpt 3: Laying Down the Line

We drove on down a maze of dirt roads deeper into the forest. Ahead, smoke was boiling out from the woods. A fire engine sat at a crossroads. The ground crew, highly visible in their yellow fire-retardant Nomex shirts, had started a prescribed burn at Unit 9.3. We parked near a scorched swath of land which paralleled the road bed and stepped out of the truck.

Striding fast along the fire break--in this case, a dirt road--the crew was creating a “black line” about 20 yards wide by pouring fire onto the ground cover from drip torches, canisters of “slash fuel,” a diesel and gas mixture in a 3:1 ratio. When tilted, the torches dripped fire from metal spouts tipped with wicks. . . .

Excerpt 4: The Burn

I had been to the refuge often, hiking, fishing, hunting, and biking; but I’d never seen it like this. It was a Dantesque scene of an inferno. The ground was smoldering black. Three-foot flames licked at the tree trunks. The yellow-shirted, smoke-smudged crew tramped through the firebreak, setting fire to any patch of wiregrass that hadn’t yet caught. A yellow fire engine, red lights flashing, stood sentinel on the dirt road.

I looked on from the firebreak with Scott and Mark Parker, the ground burn boss, and watched the thick gray smoke roiling into the sky and wondered how the devil the helicopter crew could see to drop its pattern of fireballs into the burn zone. . . .

I asked if any animals take a hit in the burns. Mark paused. “There’s always a possibility of killing a few. But on a refuge that’s 45,000 acres, the benefit of new growth outweighs the small amount of loss.” The argument is, it’s better for wildlife to suffer small, periodic burns than one catastrophic wildfire which kills an entire forest community. . . .