Red-cockaded Woodpeckers on the McCurtain County Wilderness Area

Part of the Endangered Species Act

The red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) is a federally endangered species that has a very restricted habitat. This species nests only in old-growth pine stands which, in Oklahoma, occur in the southeast. The major habitat problems for the species are that much of these old-growth pine forests have been converted to other habitats, are in short-cycle logging rotations, or have been degraded by hardwood encroachment due to years of fire suppression.

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is working to increase the number of red-cockaded woodpeckers in Oklahoma through landscape scale habitat restoration and site specific management.

In Oklahoma, the red-cockaded woodpecker is found only on the McCurtain Wilderness Area. Here, habitat restoration work includes thinning midstory hardwoods to promote pine regeneration and conducting controlled burns at three year intervals to control hardwood development. Management work at RCW clusters (sites that contain active nesting and roosting cavities) include cavity maintenance and cleaning, installation of artificial nesting cavities, and banding of nestlings and juvenile RCW’s. Also, if a cluster is found to contain only a single bird, a mate is secured from a donor population in another state and released at the site. At recruitment stands, sites with good habitat but no active clusters, up to four artificial cavities are installed and maintained to promote the establishment of new clusters.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers are an endangered species that can be found in far southeastern Oklahoma.

The red-cockaded woodpeckers that live together as a group in a cluster consists of one pair of breeding adults and one or more helpers, which are usually sons from the previous breeding seasons. However, about ten percent of helpers are females.

John Skeen, a southeast region senior biologist with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation has worked with red-cockaded woodpeckers since 1992.

“Red-cockaded woodpeckers are not sedentary,” Skeen says. “Individuals often move from one group to another. When one of a breeding pair is lost, frequently a helper from an adjacent cluster fills the vacancy. Juvenile females that disperse in the fall sometimes travel great distances in search of proper habitat and a cluster vacancy. Recently a female was trapped on the wilderness area that had been banded the previous year at a site in Arkansas, approximately 212 air miles away. The foraging range of a cluster is usually 250 to 300 acres but varies with the quality of the habitat. ”

Currently, there are about 15 groups of birds present on the McCurtain County Wilderness Area, Skeen says.

“The future of the RCW in Oklahoma and throughout its range depends upon restoring the old growth pine/hardwood forest on a landscape scale and maintaining the forest with periodic controlled burns.”

For more information about Endangered Species Act grants, click here.

Written by Lesley B. McNeff. Lesley is the Wildlife Diversity Information Specialist for the Department of Wildlife.