Woodpecker wars.

How much woods should an endangered woodpecker peck if its numbers are shrinking and its habitat is besieged?

Dr. Jeff Walters braces a gun stock against his right shoulder and scans the trees through a high-power scope. Thirty feet above him a small bird in black-and-white stripes is perched on the edge of a hole in a huge longleaf pine, a cautious head cocked toward the visitors below. Walters steadies the gun on his forearm and settles the scope. The nervous bird is hard to find with the naked eye, high up in the tree, lost in the chalky-white ooze of dried sap that drains from resin wells drilled by the woodpeckers. The sticky sap gums up the scales of marauding snakes that prey on woodpecker young. From a distance the trunk looks like a giant candlestick.

For a moment all is silent, and stonestill. But there is no trigger to pull, for the biologist isn't out to shoot this bird. "Meet red-cockaded woodpecker 'red over aluminum, orange over yellow-orange,"' Walters says, eyes still peering through the scope duct-taped to the battered, gunless gun stock. At his words, the bird flits higher into the pine canopy and disappears.

This bird in the brush is one of some 5,300 red-cockaded woodpeckers that Walters, an associate professor of zoology at North Carolina State University, and his associates have banded with colored tags in the south-central sandhills of North Carolina. After 13 years of study, Walters can not only identify nearly every one of the red-cockadeds on a 250,000-acre tract of sandy pinelands, he also can tell you who the bird's parents and grandparents were.

And he can tell you that these woodpeckers are in trouble.

The red-cockaded, once one of the most common woodpeckers in the southeastern United States, was listed as endangered soon after the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973. It's been on the list ever since. The woodpecker lives only in old-growth pine ecosystems, preferably longleaf pine forests, whose historically expansive range has been reduced to relict populations spread thinly across the southern Atlantic and Gulf Coast states.

But the bird that's become a rarer sight in the wild has become a frequent visitor to the halls of justice, for controversy surrounding the red-cockaded woodpecker has rewritten the book on endangered-species legislation and management, and changed the way federal land is managed across much of the Southeast.

"In moving public agencies to pay much closer attention to environmental regulations on public lands, the woodpecker has been the leader," Walters explains. "With the spotted owl, the court case was to get them on the endangered-species list, but the only reason that was important was because of the legal precedents set with red-cockaded woodpeckers."

Those precedents, in fact, have opened new doors of opportunity for a species many predicted would never see the middle of the next century. In his 1989 findings in the precedent-setting Sierra Club vs. Yeutter case, U.S. District Judge Robert Parker wrote that "we are presiding over the last rites of this cohabitant of the blue planet." Lately, however, biologists have begun to breathe a sigh of relief, and some--including Walters--say the red-cockaded woodpecker could play the starring role in the greatest endangered-species success story ever told.

Picoides borealis is an unlikely headliner; the bird lacks the glitz of a spotted owl or a Florida panther. A large specimen might stand all of 7 1/2 inches from its four toes to the top of its head, where a tiny red streak behind the eye of the adult male--the "cockade"--is visible only when the bird is agitated. The birds eat insects and insect eggs they find while scaling the bark from pines.

But what makes this half-handful of feathers and beak an endangered species cause celebre is its total dependence on an ecosystem under siege. The red-cockaded woodpecker is the only bird that lives in cavities dug into live southern pine trees. It takes each bird up to several years to tunnel through the living sapwood and into the dead heartwood of mature pines, there to excavate a gourd-shaped room that will be its home, unused by other birds.

Those cavity trees are located in clusters, and each "clan" of woodpeckers is comprised of a single breeding pair, young-of-the-year, and stay-at-homes called helpers. These helpers, usually adult males one to three years old, assist their parents in feeding young birds, incubating eggs, constructing new cavities, and defending the clan's colony, or group of cavity trees. Many researchers think the bird evolved such a social system because it's more efficient for young males to wait for an adult bird to die or otherwise vacate an existing cavity than to leave the nest after fledging and find a suitable tree for excavation.

Three hundred years ago you wouldn't have had to travel far to find such trees. Once the most extensive single-species forest in the country, the open, park-like longleaf forests covered as much as 70 million acres in a great unbroken blanket from southern Virginia through the coastal plains of both Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and into Texas.

But the very trees the red-cockaded woodpecker depends upon for survival are trees consumers and the timber industry prize for their straight grain and strength. Turpentiners in the 19th century all but wiped out the country's virgin stands of longleaf, and loggers in this century have systematically decimated remaining old-growth pine forests. Society's unchecked desire for more and bigger houses, coupled with the timber industry's reliance on public lands for private gains, has brought the red-cockaded woodpecker to the brink of extinction.

Today, in fact, only four large red-cockaded woodpecker populations exist in the world, all in the southeastern United States, and all on public lands: in the Apalachicola National Forest in northern Florida; the Francis Marion National Forest in South Carolina; the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana; and in the Sandhills of North Carolina, where the population is scattered about on state land, the Army's Fort Bragg, and surrounding areas.

Still, there is hope for the red-cockaded woodpecker, and promise. But to find the light you must stomp around patches of fire-blackened forest, claw through wind-ravaged woods, and shimmy some 30 feet up pine trees, power drill dangling from your logger's belt.

First, however, you must trudge through a couple hundred pages of court documents, for it was in the courts--in particular in Parker's U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas--that the red-cockaded woodpecker's new lease on life was signed and sealed and addressed to the U.S. Forest Service.

Biologists estimate that more than half of all red-cockaded woodpeckers live on national forest lands administered by the Forest Service, and until recently federal land stewards--mandated by the law to recover populations of endangered species--could point to little success in halting the plummeting number of woodpeckers on public land. In fact, during the 1980s the number of red-cockaded woodpeckers in Texas nosedived, with estimated losses of more than 75 percent in the Sabine National Forest and over 70 percent on some private lands.

By the mid-1980s it was apparent that the Texas population was imperiled. In 1985 the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and the Texas Committee on Natural Resources sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, parent organization of the U.S. Forest Service, to cease timber activities "believed to have an adverse effect on the red-cockaded woodpecker." When the case went to trial three years later, Judge Parker agreed with the conservation consortium that the Forest Service had indeed neglected to implement its own management guidelines, and ordered the Service to take action to save the woodpeckers. When the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Parker's decision in March of 1991, the word was out. Screw around with endangered-species habitat on land with a title signed by John Q. Public, and you'd better polish the wingtips. You're headed to court.

In officialdom, Parker's decision is known as Sierra Club vs. Yeutter, but anybody who has anything to do with the bird in question--or any endangered species, for that matter--refers to it simply as "the Texas case."

"The Texas case," says Walters, "established a precedent that if the endangered-species population is faring poorly, then someone is violating the law. The proof now is not whether managers or agencies are following some set of guidelines, but whether or not the species is doing well. And there's no fooling around with that; either it is or it isn't."

Specifically, the Texas case held that if a federal agency with responsibility for the habitat of an endangered species causes habitat degradation--or fails to prevent habitat degradation by other than natural causes--it is in violation of Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act, which makes it illegal to "take" an endangered species. The court ruled that the Forest Service's "even-aged timber harvests," such as clearcutting, led to the decline of an endangered species. Parker ruled that habitat destruction and degradation is as sure a way of harming red-cockaded woodpeckers as is shooting them with a gun.

Once Parker handed down the injunction for the Texas national forests, the Sierra Club et al served 60-day notices of intent to sue on every other national forest that contained red-cockaded woodpeckers. Subsequently, says Douglas L. Honnold, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund staff attorney who handled the case, the U.S. Forest Service agreed to cease clearcutting practices in woodpecker habitat on all national forest land in the southeastern United States until a new management direction could be drafted.

"The Texas case," Honnold says, "revolutionized the way the Forest Service manages red-cockaded woodpecker habitat." Before, many endangered-species proponents felt, the Forest Service seemed to operate on the basis of timber first and wildlife be damned; now, says Walters, "the Forest Service is tired of being the bad guys. They've said they are going to manage for woodpeckers, and if the timber people want to sue them, then that's fine with them."

Even the timber industry has taken a new look at how it affects endangered species. Dr. Gene Wood, professor of forest-wildlife ecology at Clemson University, recently completed a two-year effort to write a red-cockaded-woodpecker management plan for timber powerhouse Georgia-Pacific Corporation.

Still, Judge Parker's decision was Big News for the subculture of endangered-species management. But before fans of the woodpecker could get a hearty cheer going, tragedy sounded a chorus of destruction among the most promising of the large populations. When Hurricane Hugo smashed into the South Carolina shoreline, Craig Watson, wildlife biologist for Francis Marion National Forest, topped off the gas tank in his four-wheel-drive and double-checked his chainsaw. It would be a long night for the world's second-largest community of red-cockaded woodpeckers.

Today, 3 1/2 years after the storm, "the Marion" is still a forest largely in ruins. Everywhere--as far as you can see, as far as you can drive in the forest--the trees are shattered, splintered, bent, and broken, like corn stubble in a winter field.

Hurricane Hugo devastated the woodpecker population. Eighty-seven percent of all cavity trees were destroyed, as were an estimated 63 percent of the birds themselves. Gone was 70 percent of the forest's pine sawtimber, future cavity trees for generations to come. As the eye of the storm cut a path through the Marion, the world's only increasing red-cockaded woodpecker population was nearly wiped from existence.

Marion biologists reacted quickly. Using new technology developed by Walters' group on the Sandhills study area, Robert Hooper, a biologist with the Southeastern Forest Experiment Station, and Watson began an aggressive campaign of artificial cavity construction in the remaining pine stands deemed large enough to support woodpeckers. Using chainsaws and large-bit power drills, artificial cavities and "starter holes" were drilled into the trees to provide shelter--immediate and future--for the homeless survivors of Hugo. To date, almost 1,000 cavities and starter holes have been completed.

On a hot October day, wildlife technician Eddie Taylor attaches a tree-climbing ladder to a mature longleaf pine and climbs 20 feet up the limbless trunk. Leaning backward into the support of a logging belt that snakes around the tree, he guides a drill bit into the heartwood of the pine. The drill whines through the open forest like a chainsaw, spewing chunks of wood that pile up against the fire-blackened trunk like autumn leaves.

Ignoring the din, Hooper focuses his binoculars on a distant cavity tree, whose entrance hole has been widened or "blown out" by flying squirrels or pileated woodpeckers. The problem increases, he explains, as the pine forest's mid-story grows taller. The growing mid-story may be a boon to quail and turkeys, but it doesn't bode well for the red-cockaded woodpecker.

"The woodpecker can't tolerate what we call mid-story encroachment," Hooper explains. The fast-growing pines are the first trees to become established after land is cleared, but they eventually give way to the growing hardwood understory that matures into a hardwood forest. But long before that, when the hardwood mid-story approaches the cavities, the woodpeckers abandon their cavities.

"The red-cockaded woodpecker has evolved with the longleaf and shortleaf pine ecosystems, both of which are fire-driven," Hooper says. In the past, wildfires would regularly sweep through the open, park-like forests, restraining the growth of the hardwood understory and maintaining the carpet of wiregrass. But wildfires can no longer be allowed to burn uncontrolled, and today, managed "prescribed burning" maintains that system.

Above, Taylor finishes the drilled cavity, scarring the trunk with the drill bit to start the resin flowing. The artificial cavities, according to Hooper, are time-consuming, costly--and absolutely critical. "They are incredibly effective," he says. Woodpeckers sometimes move in within hours of their construction; in fact, during the 1992 nesting season, a full 63 percent of all the Marion's red-cockaded woodpecker nests were found in artificial cavities.

Another experiment at Marion has brought positive results: Artificial cavities have been placed in stands of suitable habitat but where no records of red-cockaded woodpeckers exist. Of the seven so-called "recruitment" stands in place, six now have active colonies and five of those successfully nested this past season.

Such success hasn't come cheaply. After the hurricane turned the forest into a quarter-million-acre thicket, the cost of prescribed burning increased fivefold. Before the storm, the Marion's annual wildlife budget hovered around $100,000. After Hugo, in fiscal 1991, that figure soared to $1.2 million. Funding is getting more difficult to secure--the current budget is down to $220,000--but there is still hope for the bird on the Marion.

"It has been a tremendous learning experience," Hooper says. "We'll have much better information about the bird and its needs when we combine what we knew before Hugo and what we have and will learn after the storm."

Hooper concedes that the red-cockaded's future in the Marion is brighter than first thought after Hugo, but then the khaki-clad biologist thrusts his hands in his pockets and stares into the broken forest. "But the bird took an awful beating," he says, "and that was a heavy price to pay for new information."

Paying the price--and deciding who picks up the tab--is a question that defines the red-cockaded's future. It's a question that takes many forms, be it whether woodpeckers will force the U.S. Army to shut down a crucial artillery training range on its Fort Bragg installation, whether the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, hospital will be able to build a parking lot near an active cavity tree, or how much timber the Apalachee Pole Company in Florida will be able to harvest in coming years from the Apalachicola National Forest.

Back at the basement headquarters of the Sandhills study area, where Jeff Walters is turning off the lights after spending the sundown hours netting an unbanded young woodpecker, the question takes the form of stacks of aerial photographs of woodpecker habitat. Dark splotches of forest are intermixed with lighter, cleared patches that seem to grow amoeba-like on each side of the roads. Even in these static images, the edges of the clearcuts seem to push deeper and deeper into the forest.

Walters turns off the lights and makes his way to his car, footsteps softened by the pine needles underfoot.

"Right now," he says in the dim glow of the dome light, "we could make the red-cockaded woodpecker the greatest conservation success story in the history of the nation. We know what the answers are. We know what to do, and how to do it, to save these birds. We know what it will cost, and who will have to pay.

"The only question is, are we as a nation willing to pay it?"

Eddie Nickens is a natural-resources writer/photographer who is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

WOODPECKER HOT POCKETS

APALACHICOLA NATIONAL FOREST. The U.S. Forest Service has documented some 700 active colony sites in this northern Florida forest, making its population the species' largest. But there are two districts in the national forest. In the Apalachicola District, red-cockadeds are holding their own. But across the Ochlockonee River in the Wakulla district, only 186 active colonies remain. Researchers warned in the spring of 1991 that a population crash in Wakulla may be imminent.

SANDHILLS OF NORTH CAROLINA. The birds on Walters' study area are part of a greater population that is the second-largest in existence. Comprising the state's Sandhills Gamelands, the U.S. Army's Fort Bragg, the towns of Southern Pines and Pinehurst, and the surrounding horse farms, this area supports some 225 woodpecker clans. The population is currently considered stable.

FRANCIS MARION NATIONAL FOREST. Before Hurricane Hugo struck the South Carolina coastline in September 1989 and turned "the Marion" into a county-sized patch of broken matchsticks, the woodpecker population there, estimated at some 1,900 birds, was the second-largest and the only one known to be increasing. But 135-mile-per-hour winds felled almost 90 percent of the cavity trees; a survey a year later showed 63 percent of the Marion's woodpeckers were gone. Today the population has responded fantastically to three years of intensive management, shining a ray of hope for embattled populations elsewhere.

KISATCHIE NATIONAL FOREST. This 600,000-acre forest in central Louisiana is home to more than 300 active colonies, divided into several subpopulations. The Vernon District population is the gem of the lot, with 186 active colony sites and a stable population. All other districts in the Kisatchie forest have birds, but none boast such strong numbers as the Vernon. The Kisatchie District hosts 59 active colonies, and this population is in decline. The Southern pine beetle infestation of 1985-86 hit the forest hard. Last summer biologists trapped birds to find single males which they can augment with excess female birds from other regions.

A NEW KIND OF HARVEST

The attention garnered by the red-cockaded woodpecker has focused new light on timber harvests on both private and public lands in the Southeast. Dr. Gene Wood's research for Georgia-Pacific Corporation convinced him that the woodpeckers can thrive on lands actively managed for timber production. "The red-cockaded does not need large expanses of old-growth forest in which to forage," Wood says. "But it does need some of the attributes of old-growth."

Red-cockadeds can't forage adequately in forests cut every 20 or 25 years, Wood says, but they can when pine stands are rotated every 40 years. Then, with enough cavity trees and future cavity trees protected, and woodpecker habitat regularly burned, "there is no question in my mind," Wood says, "that timber production and red-cockaded woodpeckers can coexist.

"Private landowners are going to have to sacrifice some profits," he explains. "But we can have our cake and eat most of it."

How much cake ends up on the timber-harvest plate is also at issue on federal lands. Early in '93 the U.S. Forest Service will release for public review its draft of the recovery strategy for red-cockaded woodpeckers on national forests in the Southern Region. Originally scheduled for release in the first quarter of 1992, the plan has been pushed farther and farther back.

"During the scoping period the response we got from the public was that they wanted an in-depth economic analysis, and that's taking longer than we expected," explains Dennis Krusac, endangered-species specialist with the Southern Region.

According to the Federal Register, the guidelines will set a maximum percentage of the area within one-quarter mile of colonies allowed in the 0-10 and 0-30 age classes at 6.5 percent and 20 percent, respectively, to prevent habitat fragmentation; set minimum rotation ages ranging from 70-120 years, depending on tree species, to ensure trees suitable for cavity development; and set four different management-intensity levels based on woodpecker population size and trend to ensure adequate protection of small, vulnerable populations.

The guidelines will also establish criteria that will be used to delineate habitat-management areas, determine population objectives to ensure demographic stability, and establish monitoring requirements.

Joe Dabney, red-cockaded woodpecker team leader and author of the upcoming plan, is expecting even more criticism when the Forest Service goes public with the management guidelines: "I strongly suspect that we will be appealed and sued by those on both sides of the issue, and that tells me that we're getting close to where we ought to be, for we are basing our decisions on the best scientific information we have today."

THE FORT BENNING CASE

A landmark case involving the red-cockaded woodpecker on federal lands has all eyes focused on yet another courtroom, this one in Columbus, Georgia. In January 1992, three civilian employees of the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that they criminally conspired to conceal the presence of red-cockaded woodpecker trees and colonies in order to allow and promote commercial timber harvests in a manner that violated the Endangered Species Act.

The Army wanted to clearcut 640 acres at Fort Benning for a drop zone for ranger and airborne operations. According to the indictment, the three civilians--the chiefs of the Natural Resources Management Division and Environmental Management Division and the Natural Resources Management Division's forestry supervisor--submitted false documents that, by failing to reveal the presence of red-cockaded woodpeckers, did therefore indicate that none were present on certain parcels, which subsequently were timbered. The defendants are charged with the willful making of fraudulent maps for the timber sales.

Since the announcement of the indictments, the American Pulpwood Association has taken up the banner for the defense. APA has asked its members to support a legal defense fund established for the defendants; approximately $26,000 has been raised so far. But the original trial date of September 8, 1992, has been pushed back to no earlier than February or March of 1993.

Federal prosecutors aren't commenting on the case, and woodpecker experts have been asked not to comment until requests for testimony have been made. Still, there has been speculation that the delay may be a calculated move to wait and see what happens with the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act.

But one thing is certain: When the birds find themselves once again in the hall of justice, they'll be watched as closely there as they are in the old-growth pine forests they call home.