The numbers of the red cockaded woodpecker are increasing in the Southeast, and in Jones County, due to specific management practice designed to increase the population of the federally endangered species.

Locally, Jason Nolde, District Wildlife Biologist with the Chickasawhay Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service, other staff members and volunteers are having success with the program. The numbers on the 150,000 acres managed on the Chickasawhay Wildlife Management Area (WMA) have increased from 35 birds in 2003 to 103 this past spring, when the last count was taken.

“As a whole, the population is approximately 6,000 (in the 11 state population area),” Nolde said, “just a small percentage of what it used to be. Here, there are 42 active groups.” A group consists of a pair of male and female birds, and no helpers or up to two to three, maybe four, helper birds. The birds are listed as existing in Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina and at a few locations in Missouri. “The historical range covered the old Longleaf Pine Range, which was once 60-90 million acres. Now it’s down to one to percent of what it used to be.”

The red cockaded woodpecker was once a common bird in the pine forests of the Southeast. The bird lives in cavities of mature pine trees, which have been clearcut and ravaged over the years, thus reducing the habitat of the birds. The species was declared endangered in 1970, and has the same endangered status as the bald eagle and whooping crane.

“We try to keep these birds within their geographic reason because they’re acclimated to a certain topography,” Nolde said. But birds are moved from one location to another within their region once a population reaches a certain goal — “Then it’s considered recovered,” he said.

Helper birds within a cluster help incubate, forage and feed young birds and also defend them and the territory, which typically consists of 100-500 acres. “The better the habitat, the smaller the territory will be, and they won’t have to branch out as far,” Nolde said.

Of the 150,000 acres comprising the WMA, roughly 130,000 acres is considered a habitat management area, suited to being a red cockaded woodpecker habitat area.

Eggs and young birds face predators such as hawks, but the main concern is cavity competitors — such as the Southern flying squirrel, which competes for the same cavity in the trees the woodpeckers prefer. “We don’t exactly know why, but they haven’t been as big of a problem since Hurricane Katrina,” Nolde said. “It could be because more cavities were created following the hurricane, and the squirrels moved to those. We really don’t know.” Also competing for the same space are bluebirds. “We hatch out a lot of bluebirds in the holes, too.” The staff regularly erects bluebird boxes on the management area.

Artificial nesting boxes are sometimes inserted into cavities to create more habitable space. Nolde recently returned from south Texas, where he assisted 12-15 people who worked on the RCW recovery effort. The team installed 300 cavity inserts in two and one-half weeks.

Nolde graduated from Leesville (La.) High School and McNeese State in Lake Charles, La. He worked with Boise Cascade Timber Co. in the environmental department while in college and started with the U.S. Forest Service upon graduation. His first Forest Service job was at Fort Polk, La., then worked on the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas and at a district office in Minden, La., east of Shreveport.