More than 100 years ago, the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker was a common sight in open stands of old longleaf pines throughout the Southeast. Throughout the decades, as the region thinned out ancient pine forests, the population of the woodpecker decreased. By 1970 the RCW was on the brink of extinction.

Thus, when biologists from the Bureau of Land Management's Jackson Field Office in Mississippi learned two clusters of RCW existed in northern Florida, they were very excited. Located in Lathrop Bayou, a small public-domain tract, one cluster consists of a reproducing pair and juvenile male helper. The other, a male bird and his son, has been without a female since 1995. So, when the possibility of obtaining a female bird from a donor site in Georgia became a reality, BLM biologists were ecstatic and raring to go.

The relocation of the birds took place in December 2007, following an incredible day-long road trip from Mississippi, through Alabama, to Georgia and then to Florida. BLM biologists Faye Winters and Alison McCartney and Jim Moyer, a biologist from St. Joe Co., a private partner, arrived at the donor site in southwest Georgia at an opportune time. They were able capture the two juvenile birds the site wished to donate just as they came to roost in their cavity trees for the evening. The biologists then placed the birds, a male and a female, in ventilated boxes for immediate transportation to the tract in Lathrop Bayou, Florida.

Following a several-hour vehicle ride and a moonlit boat ride, the birds arrived at the site, where biologists placed and secured each inside a cavity tree. The birds spent the remainder of the night becoming more acclimated to their new surroundings. At daybreak, biologists returned to the tract to simultaneously release the birds. This created a “chance meeting” between the two; and as biologists had hoped, the birds quickly struck up a conversation. If that first conversation leads to a deeper relationship, biologists will count the relocation as a success. It will be up to the birds to stay, survive and reproduce in their new homes. BLM and its partners in the project will know the outcome in the spring of 2008.

Lathrop Bayou has the potential to house three active, reproducing clusters of red-cockaded woodpeckers on its 550 acres of longleaf pine/wiregrass habitat. The Lathrop Bayou relocation is the latest endeavor in a partnership to manage and restore the RCW population between federal, state and corporate entities in Florida.