Is a "hands-off" approach appropriate for red-cockaded woodpecker conservation in twenty-first-century landscapes?

The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) is well adapted to fire-maintained pine ecosystems of the southeastern United States. Manag ement practices vary greatly among land ownerships. In some wilderness area s and state parks, a "no management" policy has eliminated use of prescribe d fire, artificial cavities, and woodpecker translocation, tools that have proved effective elsewhere in recovering woodpecker populations. We compare d forests with essentially "no management'' to actively managed forests of similar tree ages and similar red-cockaded woodpecker population demographi cs. We also compared sites that had received no management in the past to t ile same sites after management. In every case, populations in forests that did riot use state-of-the-art management for woodpeckers declined severely compared to those in managed forests. Because managed forests typically us ed all available management techniques concurrently, it was not possible to separate and rank effectiveness of specific management activities. One exc eption was the Wade Tract in Georgia, where prescribed fire was the primary activity for herbaceous layer and hardwood management in a high-density, s table woodpecker population. Wilderness areas, which are intended to be pri stine places that preserve biodiversity, are losing red-cockaded woodpecker s, a keystone species in the ecosystem, at an alarming rate. Collectively, 9 groups of red-cockaded woodpeckers were present in 4 wilderness areas in Texas national forests in 1983. At the close of tile millennium, only one w oodpecker group remained and its continued existence is unlikely without ma nagement. The very fragmented features of present-day landscapes and interv ention by humans impair the effectiveness of natural disturbance processes, primarily growing-season fire, that historically produced and maintained o pen pine savannas with grass-forb herbaceous layers in the pre-Columbian fo rests of the southeastern U.S. therefore, active management must be used if the red-cockaded woodpecker is to persist.