The Virginia Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Safe Harbor Agreement

Posted: 01-Mar-2002; Updated: 02-Jul-2003

The red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) has been protected as an endangered species since 1970, but has nevertheless continued to decline markedly, especially on private land. Its northernmost population is in Virginia, where fewer than 20 birds remain. Nearly all of them are found on The Nature Conservancy's Piney Grove Preserve in the southern part of the state. By encouraging neighboring landowners to carry out habitat improvements that will benefit the woodpecker, The Nature Conservancy hopes to enlarge the Virginia population of RCWs and secure its future in the state. TNC also is enrolling its own 2,600-acre Piney Grove as a safe harbor property and will continue to manage it with the goal of increasing the number of RCWs. International Paper enrolled 286 acres, which it is restoring and enhancing habitat to provide foraging habitat for red-cockaded woodpeckers.

Landowners can enroll land in the Virginia red-cockaded woodpecker safe harbor program by agreeing to carry out any of a number of activities beneficial to the woodpecker. These include prescribed burning or other means of controlling hardwood understory so as to restore the open, park-like pine forest conditions that the woodpecker requires, installing artificial cavities in suitably sized trees so as to increase potential nesting and roosting sites, and extending the rotation cycles on timber stands to enable trees to reach sufficient size to provide good quality foraging habitat, as well as other activities.

To formally enroll land in the program, landowners enter into a short cooperative agreement with The Nature Conservancy specifying the actions they agree to implement and their "baseline" responsibilities (i.e., responsibilities based upon the occurrence on their land of red-cockaded woodpeckers prior to initiation of the agreement). Enrolled landowners receive a "certificate of inclusion" that extends to them the protection of the master permit held by TNC. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the US Fish and Wildlife Service review agreements before they become final.