On a Florida Bombing Range, Endangered Woodpeckers Get a Second Chance
The red-cockaded woodpecker was recently downgraded from its longstanding status as endangered, now described by the federal govenrment as threatened. Credit: John Serrao
Florida’s Avon Park Air Force Range is teeming with life. Over 40 at-risk species occupy the 106,000-acre expanse used by the military for training exercises — including bombardments.
But Spartan scientists are using the range to test something other than weapons: innovative strategies to save threatened species.
Punctuating the deep rumble of artillery explosions, the rapid-tapping drum of the red-cockaded woodpecker rattles on. For decades, it threatened to fade away.
Now, conservation biologists from Michigan State University are looking back through time to determine the success of a three-decade intervention and monitoring project designed to rescue the range’s imperiled woodpeckers.
Their results, published in a special edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrate the potential for translocations — the practice of moving individuals from donor populations to isolated, at-risk ones — to reverse long-term population decline in endangered species. It’s the latest study from MSU’s Fitzpatrick Lab to analyze how translocation efforts can help restore connectivity between isolated populations and bring dwindling species back from the brink.