Endangered woodpeckers found an unlikely refuge at a military base

On the surface, the 106,000-acre Avon Park Air Force Range in central Florida seems an unlikely refuge for endangered wildlife, including woodpeckers. The U.S. Air Force uses the property for bombing practice, artillery training, and low-level flight runs.

Yet tucked between target zones and drop sites lies one of the largest remaining swaths of longleaf pine savanna in the state – a habitat that now shelters more than forty at-risk species.

Thanks to an unusual partnership among the military, federal biologists, and academic researchers, this living laboratory has just yielded some of the clearest evidence yet that carefully planned animal “translocations” can pull struggling populations back from the brink.

Moving endangered woodpeckers

A team led by Michigan State University (MSU) conservation biologists reported that moving endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers from healthier forests into Avon Park did far more than provide a short-term boost.

Over two decades, newcomers and their offspring boosted numbers, improved genetics, and outperformed locals in nesting and survival.

This is a rare success story scientists seldom get to document in such detail. MSU graduate student Alex Lewanski, the paper’s first author, spent years analyzing banding records, nesting logs, and genetic samples collected since 1998.

The need for a genetic rescue

Once common from Texas to the Carolinas, red-cockaded woodpeckers depend on mature longleaf pines peppered with natural cavities.

Logging, fire suppression, and development have reduced the bird’s range to just three percent of its original habitat. Small, isolated colonies face a double threat: fewer mates and the gradual erosion of genetic diversity needed to adapt.

Avon Park’s savannas – more than 35,000 acres of open pine and wiregrass – offered prime real estate, but only a tiny remnant population of endangered woodpeckers survived there in the 1990s.

Beginning in 1998, field crews from nearby Archbold Biological Station, working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Air Force land managers, captured juvenile birds in six larger populations. The birds were released, in pairs, into vacant Avon Park territories.

By 2016, the team had translocated 54 individuals – each fitted with color leg bands for lifetime tracking.

Watching the bird colony grow

Because the range is a federally protected “Sentinel Landscape,” researchers could monitor the birds with unusual intensity. They mapped cavity trees, checked nests weekly, and recorded every fledgling’s parents.

Over time, they also collected feathers and genetic material, building pedigrees that now extend across three woodpecker generations.

Lewanski and senior author Sarah Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor at MSU, combined those field notes with the genetic analyses to ask a suite of questions. Did the imported birds survive, pair with locals or other transplants, produce offspring that lived longer or had more young, and how did the influx affect the colony’s overall genetic health?

Stronger birds, stronger colony

The answers were striking. Roughly seventy percent of the moved birds survived to breed – remarkable for a species with high juvenile mortality. Many paired with native adults, injecting new genetic combinations into the population.

Translocated birds tended to nest for more years than locally hatched ones, adding measurably to annual fledgling counts. Over 25 years, the Avon Park colony grew steadily, with pedigree data showing a matching decline in inbreeding levels.

“The only reason these populations are still around is because of collaborations and long-term investment in these imperiled species,” Lewanski said. He credits coordinated burning programs that restore open pine structure and the military’s commitment to conservation buffers around training zones.

Lessons for working landscapes

The findings echo earlier MSU work demonstrating that gene flow – moving individuals or their sperm and eggs between isolated groups – can jump-start recovery in fish, amphibians, and plants.

In woodpeckers, the benefits are magnified because suitable habitat is so rare and fragmented.

“It has the potential to act as an important component of managing many imperiled species,” Lewanski said. He pointed to Florida scrub jays and gopher tortoises as candidates for relocation into protected military bases or private ranches in federal incentive programs.

Predicting rescue with data

Fitzpatrick added that emerging DNA technologies will soon let managers gauge genetic rescue needs without decades of cavity-tree checks.

Portable sequencers and landscape-scale genome surveys can flag rising inbreeding long before it hurts reproduction, guiding when and where to move birds.

Genomic analysis combined with on-site monitoring could offer tailor-made strategies for managers attempting translocations. It could also help build data dashboards that integrate burn schedules, nest counts, and genetic risk scores.

A blueprint beyond the bombing range

As climate change, urban sprawl and timber markets continue to carve up southeastern pine ecosystems, the Avon Park study offers rare optimism.

It shows that even tiny remnant populations on “working” lands – not just pristine refuges – can rebound if managers pair habitat stewardship with strategic translocations.

Endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers once filled 90 million acres of longleaf pine with the calls of noisy social clans. Its recovery at a bombing range suggests that, with the right mix of science and partnerships, extinction isn’t inevitable.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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