(buckles belt)
- [Jason] Most endangered species
have something unique about them,
that they need a very specific niche or type of habitat
to meet their needs.
The red-cockaded woodpecker is not any different.
- [Warren] Flying squirrels are probably
one of our biggest issues.
They take over the cavities and trash 'em up
to where the birds can't use 'em.
So, probably our biggest issues that we have to deal with.
They'll eat eggs and young as well.
So they're kind of a problem all the way around.
(calm music)
- The red-cockaded woodpecker is an endangered species
that we have here on the Ouachita.
We've got a wide variety of tools that we use to manage
for the species.
We restrict the cavities to keep them from being enlarged,
we clean the cavities out,
remove the squirrels and relocate them.
We monitor their nesting activity
and the recruitment of the species.
The management of the timber, the
thinning of the timber, restoring the mid-story condition
to appropriate densities
and the use of fire to maintain it all.
It's all intertwined together
to provide habitat in this ecosystem.
Most people have never even seen the species
and I get to work with it daily,
helping provide what it needs to survive and thrive.
- We know from historic accounts of travelers,
a lot of the forest were comprised of old trees,
open stands, with a lot of herbaceous vegetation
and forbes in the understory.
And that's what Shortleaf Pine Bluestem really is.
It's a Prairie underneath the forest.
The reason for these stands being open
was that they burned regularly.
They burned regularly on their own,
and they were burned regularly prior to European settlement.
- Native Americans were burning these woods for a long time
across the United States actually.
We harvested the Virgin forest from 1880 to 1920
across the south.
That was followed by a period where
wildfires were pretty common and fairly devastating in
those cut-over stands
and so society invested an awful lot of effort in
controlling wildfire.
That withdrawal of fire from the landscape
also had unintended side effects
and one of those side effects is that we lost flora
and fauna that are adapted to a fire adapted condition.
- We had a lot of overstocked,
dense stands with woody mid-stories
because of fire suppression and fire exclusion.
A lot of things had been lost.
Elk, were gone, Bison were gone.
We almost lost red-cockaded woodpeckers.
We got off on the right foot by having research scientists
look, here's the problem.
You've got to have landscapes of open stands,
herbaceous under stores and older trees.
Once they gave us that answer, they gave us an objective.
- [R.L.] Okay. We had a regional variance today
for humidity,
dropping down below 24%.
So, we did get approval for that.
Fire to me, as far as prescribed burning goes,
is kind of fascinating in a way.
You're taking an element that can run out of control,
and then you're trying to make it do the things
that you want it to do.
And so there's a lot of art to that.
- Implementing the controlled burns
allows us to plan and then so fires now on our terms.
We're reducing the fuels by implementing a controlled burn.
We're setting the plan parameters,
the goals and objectives for the burn.
You know, these places evolved
and adapted with frequent fire.
Fire here, under the right situation is something
that is right as rain for these ecosystems.
- It's an amazing tool to clean up the landscape,
to reset it. If you're successful
and you're able to burn through those areas,
and then you come back in the spring and you see that
beautiful green grass growing everywhere,
there's a ton of satisfaction in that.
It's a great thing to help the ecology of the area.
- There is a pretty simple recipe
for restoring these forests.
You do prescribed fire under the appropriate conditions
at the right time of year,
and you implement certain types of timber management
activities and you monitor that
and you see where you're going annually with those tools.
(machinery roaring)
Without managing timber,
and then selling that as wood products, in a sustainable
long-term way,
then you have no way to finance the prescribed burning
or anything else you want to do out there.
Done in the right way,
you can fund in perpetuity, restoration.
It's like on autopilot.
(calm music)
Using these tools, fire, timber, thinnings,
We began to build a pretty incredible biodiverse, healthy
and resilient place for nature and people.
- This all began, really with the red-cockaded woodpecker.
We started, we had about nine groups
and today, we've got more than 70 groups.
This population fledges more than 100 young,
every breeding season.
That's a huge success for an endangered species.
- That's the basic metric for is the work successful,
but we've come to realize that creating this habitat to help
the red-cockaded woodpecker has helped dozens of other
species of flora and fauna that we value as well.
(calm music)
- India's a lot of work, but it's not just managing
for the red-cockaded woodpecker.
It's taking care of the whole ecosystem,
providing habitat for all the species here.
(calm music)