Path in southern Louisiana helps small bird

OFF THE BEATEN TRAIL

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A beautiful sunset with intense shades of orange and pink lights up the sky behind silhouetted tall pine trees in Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, La. DAWN WILSON PHOTOGRAPHY — COURTESY PHOTOS

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A red-cockaded woodpecker pulls pieces of bark from a pine tree at Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Lacombe, La.

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By Dawn Wilson

dwilson@prairiemountainmedia.com

Several years ago, I started to explore a large national wildlife refuge along Lake Pontchartrain in southern Louisiana.

Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge is made up of bayous, shoreline, swamps, marshes, bald cypress-tupelo forest, pine savannah and hardwood forest hammocks across its 18,000 acres. A kayak ride through the bayous and marshes offers viewing of great egrets, brown pelicans, snowy egrets, great blue herons and a variety of waterfowl. A walk on the boardwalk through the forests and swamps includes opportunities to see white-tailed deer, bald eagles, wood ducks and alligators.

But signs at one of the parking lots spoke about a little woodpecker and its fight to stay relevant.

Although quite small — they only weigh about 45 grams and measure about 5 to 9 inches in size — the bird was quite cute. Similar in appearance to other familiar woodpeckers, it had similar black and white barring on its upperparts with black spots on its belly. The bird’s name came from an extremely small flash of red on the side of its head just behind its eye.

The bird was the red-cockaded woodpecker.

Found only in the southeastern U.S. in very small, scattered regions from southern Virginia to eastern Texas, it found itself on the Endangered Species List in 1973.

But that wasn’t always the case. At one time, the bird was abundant on the East Coast from New Jersey to Florida, along the Gulf Coast to Texas and up to Missouri in the central U.S.

Due to habitat loss, the red-cockaded woodpecker population dwindled to as few as 1,470 birds, thus causing the listing.

After more than 50 years of conservation efforts, including at Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, USFWS recently downgraded the red-cockaded woodpecker from endangered to threatened on the Endangered Species List.

Today, USFWS estimates there are 7,800 clusters of the woodpecker ranging across 11 states from southern Virginia to eastern Texas.

Although the red-cockaded still faces obstacles, including continued habitat loss, impacts of climate change and the challenges of a small population size, the efforts to protect the habitat that is available for the small and fluttery bird have made an impact and will continue to be supported by the USFWS.

According to a press release from the USFWS, this achievement was reached through collaborative conservation efforts between the Interior Department, federal and state partners, Tribes, the private sector and private landowners.

To visit Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge and to see a potential conservation success story in action, travel to Lacombe, La. and visit the Boy Scout Road portion of the refuge. Several trees in the parking lot and along the nearby trails are painted with white or blue stripes. This marking identifies the trees with known or formerly used red-cockaded woodpecker nests. Visiting between April and June during nesting season offers the best opportunity to see the bird in action.