Bird may no longer be deemed threatened

Under new state rules, a woodpecker no longer meets the threshold for "threatened'' status. Some scientists disagree.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 12, 2002

Despite objections from a host of scientists, the staff of the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has concluded that the red-cockaded woodpecker no longer deserves to be called "threatened."

Although conceding that the woodpeckers' population declined by more than 20 percent over the past 20 years, the staff has proposed dropping it down a rung to a "species of special concern."

The commissioners are scheduled to vote on the move Jan. 23. They may take similar action with the manatee, downgrading it from "endangered" to merely "threatened," early next year.

The commission staff says downgrading the woodpecker is warranted because it no longer meets the state's new criteria for a threatened species.

The state's new criteria say an endangered species is one that has lost at least 80 percent of its population during the past 10 years. To qualify as threatened, a species must have lost at least 50 percent of its population during the past 10 years.

"These are not criteria to save a species but to herald its extinction," warned Reed Bowman, head of the Avian Ecology Laboratory at Archbold Biological Station in Lake Placid. Downgrading the bird's status would mean "most Florida populations would go extinct within a relatively short time."

The population of the red-cockaded woodpecker has declined 97 percent in the past century, according to the Florida Ornithological Society. The only reason the population has stabilized or improved in some areas is because biologists have been transplanting birds from one forest to another, such as the Withlacoochee State Forest near Brooksville.

A group of biology professors from Florida State University denounced the commission staff's projections of the woodpeckers' future as "little more than a shell game." And a zoologist with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory predicted that the move will "undermine the public's respect for the entire listing process and the agencies that oversee it."

This is no academic debate, say critics of the state's proposal. Animals that merit being on the state's endangered list tend to be first in line for state funding for buying environmentally sensitive land and conducting scientific research, according to a report from the Florida Ornithological Society. "Downlisting implies success and the opportunity to shift focus (along with limited budgets of staffing and dollars) to other, more critical species," wrote biologist Vic Doig, who works with woodpeckers at Goethe State Forest near Dunnellon.

But commission officials say draining the state treasury is not a good reason for classifying the woodpecker as more imperiled than it really is. They say a new management plan for the species, which has yet to be written, will mean more protection for the woodpecker, not less.

"Based on changes made to the state listing process in 1999, the protection a listed species gets from the state is based on a management plan -- not on the species' classification," said commission biologist Brian Millsap. "Reclassifying a species from endangered to threatened or species of special concern does not change the management plan, and it doesn't necessarily weaken the state's protection."

One important step in the new listing process calls for a panel of independent scientists to review the staff's work. Four scientists checked the work on the woodpecker. Only one agreed that the bird should be downgraded .

The red-cockaded woodpecker

SIZE: About as big as a cardinal.

DESCRIPTION: Black cap, black and white barred back, large white cheek patches. Name comes from a small, barely visible streak of red feathers above the cheeks on males.

FOOD: Beetles, roaches, ants.

HABITAT: Clusters in groups of up to four in cavities hollowed out in old-growth pine forests across the South. Ranges throughout Florida.

BREEDING: Females lay three to four eggs in the breeding male's roosting cavity. Other birds in the cluster assist with incubating the eggs and raising the young.

POPULATION: An estimated 14,000 adults, a drop of more than 20 percent in 20 years.

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