(CN) — Federal wildlife officials removed the red-cockaded woodpecker from the endangered species list, a decision some conservationists feared came prematurely.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday that red-cockaded woodpecker habitats across the Southeastern United States had increased nearly 40% since 2003, when officials last revised their recovery plan.
While the bird’s habitats still require active management, the agency decided to downgrade the longtime endangered species to threatened, meaning it no longer faces a serious risk of extinction.
Deb Haaland, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said on social media that over five decades of “diligent conservation and collaboration” helped the bird’s population rebound.
“Our commitment to protect biodiversity has never been more important,” she said.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers were first listed as endangered in 1970 after their population declined to fewer than 10,000 birds scattered across the Southeast. The precipitous fall was almost entirely due to habitat loss, according to wildlife officials. The pine savannahs the woodpeckers called home once dominated the region, but intense logging left behind only small and scattered forests.
Some conservationists felt the change was premature, however, as threatened species do not receive the automatic protections that endangered species do, and are subject to separate regulations determined by the listing agency.
Defenders of Wildlife, a D.C.-based conservation group, said in a statement it was disappointed by the agency’s decision to “downlist” the species, arguing it was premature as climate change and its influence on severe storms will increasingly threaten the bird’s habitat.
The organization pointed out Hurricane Helene made landfall last month just 70 miles east of Apalachicola National Forest in Florida, a refuge for thousands of the birds.
“It’s ironic that the decision to downlist has been made in the wake of one of the largest and most destructive storms to hit the Southeast in recorded history, fracturing crucial connections between red-cockaded woodpecker habitats,” said Ben Prater, southeast program director for Defenders of Wildlife.
Will Harlan, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group in Tuscon, Arizona, was more sanguine about the decision.
“These beautiful birds are making an incredible comeback thanks to the Endangered Species Act,” Harlan said. “Decades of active management by local, state and federal agencies have paid off, but a lot more still needs to be done to protect the long-leaf pine forests these woodpeckers and hundreds of other species call home.”
In written comments, state wildlife officials from several states, including Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina, raised concerns about the impact increased hurricane activity would have on the birds.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged populations in coastal regions have been impacted by hurricanes, but the woodpeckers could withstand the disasters if biologists and land managers implemented prompt post-storm recovery actions.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers are small black-and-white birds known for “live-pine excavation.” While other woodpeckers create cavities in dead trees, red-cockaded woodpeckers bore holes in living pines, which ooze a sticky resin that wards off tree-climbing snakes.
Their population continued to fall in the 1970s and 1980s before wildlife officials began to use powerful new management tools, including artificial tree cavities and prescribed burning, to stem the loss.
By 2003, there were an estimated 5,627 active clusters, which typically house 2 to 4 birds, across eleven states. Today, there are 7,794 active clusters of woodpeckers, according to wildlife officials.