Typically, cavity nesting wildlife require mature or near mature trees for nesting and foraging. Because of cavity nester requirements for older trees and snags for nesting and foraging, the provision of their habitat often conflicts with optimization of timber production. Management of forests primarily for wood fiber can reduce the availability of nesting and foraging habitat by emphasizing short timber rotations and other silvicultural practices that are detrimental to cavity nesters. Ecosystem management cannot be achieved without knowledge of the special habitat features required by woodpeckers and other cavity nesting wildlife.

Research on threatened, endangered, and sensitive species is necessary to provide information for management to maintain biodiversity. The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) is a valuable species within the southern fire-climax pine ecosystem because it is the only species that regularly makes cavities in living southern pines. By doing so, it provides cavities for hosts of other cavity-using species of vertebrates and invertebrates in an otherwise cavity barren environment. They are cavity pathfinders for the entire cavity nesting guild. In living pines, red-cockaded woodpecker cavities provide sites for pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) to enlarge, eventually providing cavities for the larger cavity-using wildlife. Thus, red-cockaded woodpeckers are a keystone species within the southern pine ecosystem and crucial for the maintenance of biodiversity. 

Red-cockadeds are also indicators of an old growth pine-savannah community that is rapidly vanishing throughout the South. Biological diversity would be enhanced if knowledge can be developed to permit the restoration and conservation of this species, its ecosystem, and other pivotal species through ecosystem management. Society will benefit from research on the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Knowledge gained by studying this species may save the red-cockaded woodpecker and eventually other cavity-using wildlife from extinction, provide future generations with enjoyment, and prevent the occurrence of expensive and prolonged litigation (such as the current and past litigation in Texas).

Recent information indicates that many red-cockaded woodpecker populations, particularly on the western end of the woodpecker's range, are experiencing high cavity tree losses as a result of southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) infestation of single cavity trees. In some instances, annual loss rates have been as high as 43% of the active cavity trees. These severe losses have occurred coincidental to intensification of cluster area management, which includes hardwood midstory removal, thinning of overstory pines, and mechanical removal of understory vegetation. These losses are currently being offset by the use of artificial cavities. However, in some cavity tree clusters the number of pines suitable for cavity inserts is critically low. Ecological factors associated with southern pine beetle infestation of single cavity trees need to be determined in order to develop management options that will permit necessary red-cockaded woodpecker cluster area management while minimizing losses of cavity trees to southern pine beetles.

The red-cockaded woodpecker is still experiencing population declines in some areas of the southern United States; most sensitive to problems are the small populations. Relationships between population demographics and habitat fragmentation and isolation of woodpecker groups, particularly mate replacement, is still not completely understood. Thresholds of permissible habitat alteration need to be determined so that habitat removal during harvest operations does not impair successful dispersal of woodpeckers for mate replacement.

Our understanding of how stand age, tree species, abundance of hardwood vegetation, and site conditions affect arthropod communities on the boles of pines is limited. Red-cockaded woodpeckers may not need the amount of foraging habitat currently specified in the recovery plan on all forest sites. We need to measure arthropod communities on pines under a variety of conditions throughout the West Gulf Coastal Plain to determine what management options enhance food resources for red-cockaded woodpeckers in managed forests.

Knowledge of specific types of nesting and foraging trees/snags required by many cavity nesters in the South is still sketchy. How fungal decay is associated with the quality of nesting and foraging habitat remains relatively uninvestigated for many woodpecker species in the South. Natural processes and anthropogenic factors that cause tree mortality will affect the fungi and arthropod communities associated with snags. Relationships among fungi, arthropod abundance, and snag quality as foraging and nesting resources for woodpeckers are not fully understood. Such information would permit the development of management options that could produce the specialized habitat required by woodpeckers and enhance our ability to accomplish ecosystem management. Because some cavity nesting species are vulnerable to loss of mature trees, efforts to define their ecological needs and develop option with younger trees should yield good returns on resources invested. Once species reach minimal densities (threatened or endangered), efforts to reverse population declines often require enormous resource investments that are sometimes ineffective.

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