A nearly two decade-long program to develop the population of an endangered bird that lives on Fort Stewart has paid off.
Officials with the installation’s Fish and Wildlife Branch said efforts to grow the post’s red-cockaded woodpecker population had reached an all time high. And that, said branch chief Tim Beaty, means more of Fort Stewart’s 280,000 acres can be opened to unrestricted training.
Since the 1980s restrictions had been placed on military training at Fort Stewart — and other military installations across the southeastern U.S. — to ensure the small woodpecker populations were not harmed.
“Slowly over time through our robust monitoring program we’ve been able to take those restrictions off a little bit at a time,” Beaty said. “Looking back now it seems like a no-brainer. Our monitoring program has shown that red-cockaded woodpeckers are not terribly disturbed by troop movements and (training).”
Currently, Fort Stewart has 351 potential breeding groups — typically comprised of a female and three to four males — living on the installation.
Within a potential breeding group each bird lives in its own
cavity in a longleaf pine, said Larry Carlile, a wildlife biologist who’s worked at Fort Stewart for 18 years.
When he began working at the installation, there were only 157 cluster groups — not all of which are considered potential breeding groups because they lack a male or a female red-cockaded woodpecker.
At that time military vehicles could not move within 50 feet of a cluster site, and only blank rounds could be fired from large-caliber weapons.
Now, there are more than 380 active clusters over about 130,000 acres on post and few limitations on where troops can train.
“Because of the success we’ve seen we can even further de-protect these cluster sites so the military can train without having to worry about the red-cockaded woodpecker,” Carlile said. “Ultimately, along with continuing to add to our population, that’s our goal.”
Along with tagging each red-cockaded woodpecker on post to monitor locations, cluster groups and age, the Fish and Wildlife Branch helps the birds by providing them with homes because they struggle to make their own.
“We’ve put more than 1,800 artificial cavities — basically a prefabricated box ... we put into drilled holes in the trees — on Fort Stewart,” he said. “We’ll put in a lot more this year because of the amount of growth we’ve seen. We want all the birds to have room.”
The woodpecker program, Carlile said, takes up the majority of the branch’s time. It’s also been its most successful initiate.
Beaty credited senior Fort Stewart officials with much of the success the Fish and Wildlife Department has had growing the population.
“It was a bit of a leap of faith for the military to allow us to try and preserve this population,” he said. “But it’s been a self-proving hypothesis, and its been a great success.
“Less protection of these birds and more woodpeckers. That’s a win-win.”