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The state wildlife commission proposes downgrading the protected status of the red-cockaded woodpecker.
By DAN DeWITT
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 19, 2001
Red-cockaded woodpeckers in the Croom Tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest are treated like the most vulnerable of creatures.
Ecologists have installed nests for them in the trunks of pine trees and bolstered their population by bringing in birds from other wild areas. They have anxiously monitored the woodpeckers to see whether they survive and reproduce.
But this attention may not be justified, according to a new report by the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The document advocates downgrading the bird's protected status from "threatened" to a "species of special concern."
Though the woodpecker remains a federal endangered species, the state's action may mean less money for programs such as the one credited with increasing the red-cockaded population of Croom -- northeast of Brooksville -- from nine to 31 in the past three years. The Citrus Tract of the forest has between 80 and 100 birds. The Richloam Tract, in Hernando and northern Pasco, has none.
"I'm absolutely opposed to changing the listing," said Vince Morris, who has led the state Division of Forestry's effort to save the bird's population in Croom.
"If you look at species that are threatened or endangered, they tend to get a lot more funding regardless of the federal designation."
The potential downlisting, as ecologists call it, also raises questions about the state's 2-year-old system for classifying species. Environmentalists say a species must be spiraling toward extinction before it can be considered threatened or endangered by the state.
"I think we need to look very carefully at this," said Rich Paul, who wrote a response to the state's report for Audubon of Florida.
"If the comprehensive review were undertaken of all the listed species, I'll bet that most of them would no longer fit the definition."
The proposed downgrading of the woodpecker's classification came as a result of a study of the species by Julie Hovis, the red-cockaded woodpecker recovery coordinator for the state wildlife commission.
She found the national population, which is limited to the Southeast, has increased from about 12,500 in 1990 to about 14,000 now. She also determined that many of the populations are small and vulnerable, meaning the population might decline 23 percent in the next 20 years.
That, by state standards, does not qualify it as a threatened species. The wildlife commission's rule requires, in most cases, that species must be facing a decline of at least 50 percent during the next 10 years or three generations. To be considered endangered, the estimated decline during the same period must generally be 80 percent.
Those standards, not Hovis' research, are at the root of the problem, said Vince Morris, who has led the effort to restore the population at Croom.
"I think she wants to be a friend of the red-cockaded woodpecker; but the way it looks right now, she's the one causing the trouble," he said.
Hovis completed a preliminary report in June. The commission requested a more comprehensive one in September. The report, along with public comment on it, will be presented to the commission again in January, Hovis said.
Her study of the woodpecker will not harm the species and should eventually help it, she said. The review was the first step in the process of creating a management plan that will create a comprehensive strategy for its recovery.
"I believe very strongly that woodpeckers are going to benefit if we get a statewide management plan," she said.
Also, she said, the previous standards for listing species -- including the woodpecker, which was designated as threatened in 1974 -- were not scientifically sound enough to withstand legal challenges.
"It was sort of an intuitive process," she said.
Finally, she said, species classified as threatened receive no more legal protection, and often no more funding, than species of special concern.
"The gopher tortoise is probably a good example of a species (of special concern) that gets a lot of attention," she said.
Generally, though, endangered and threatened species are the ones that receive most of the state's money, according to the Florida Ornithological Society.
The wildlife commission spends between three and five times as much on endangered and threatened species as it does on species of special concern, according to the society's report on the proposed downlisting of the woodpecker.
Members of the society are also concerned the state will downgrade the status of the bird without ever approving the management plan; the wildlife commission's policy on protected species recommends rather than requires that the plans be approved.
"Such a plan should be adopted with help from the scientific community prior to the proposed change in status," the report says.
Florida has the largest single group of woodpeckers in the country, the estimated 1,500 birds living in the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee. So a decision to downgrade the bird's status here, environmentalists say, may be used to remove it from the federal endangered list.
"It takes a chink out of the armor that is protecting the species," said Jerome Jackson, who helped write the ornithological society's report and led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recovery team for the species shortly after it was named to the endangered list in 1970.
"This opens the door for legal challenges on the federal level. It's just a bad precedent."
But the larger issue is that the woodpecker remains threatened by any practical definition, Jackson said.
The increases in the estimates of the species population may have come because of increased study, not actual gains, he said. If their population is actually climbing, he said, it is because of labor-intensive methods used in Croom.
The birds are sensitive to changes in habitat. They can live only in old pine trees that are free of competing oak trees. A development or logging operation, or even the failure to light regular prescribed burns, can doom entire populations.
"These gains are made by people literally picking up birds and moving them," Jackson said.
"It is not a sign of the availability of good habitat. They are basing their decision on something very artificial and ephemeral."
-- Staff writer Dan DeWitt covers the city of Brooksville, politics and the environment. He can be reached at 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com.