By the 1980s, the red-cockaded woodpecker population was below 10,000 nationwide, said Virginia Tech woodpecker expert. Biologists built boxes to serve as nests, attaching them to trees. The woodpeckers weren’t interested.
Meanwhile, Army officials were convinced to start setting fires to clear out the scrub. Now, about a third of the area burns every three years or so. The woodpecker is “an umbrella species,” biologists say. What helps woodpeckers is good for the St. Francis’ satyr butterfly and dozens of other vulnerable species.
Because no one was venturing into the woods there, no one was dismantling beaver dams. No one was snuffing out fires. Aside from lingering fragments of munitions, the landscape was much like North Carolina before it was altered by humans. Haddad and his students also tromp through the swamp and count the insects. As they take their census, they walk on thin planks placed in the water so as not to destroy the delicate leaves the butterfly feeds on.
That is better management, said the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Frazer, adding, “It allows us to regulate really only those things that are important to conservation.”
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