Posted on 05/02/2012 6:04:42 PM PDT by Hunton Peck
Smokey Bear has done such a good job stamping out forest fires the past half-century that a woodpecker that's survived for millions of years by eating beetle larvae in burned trees is in danger of going extinct in parts of the West, according to conservationists seeking U.S. protection for the bird.
Four conservation groups filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday to list the black-backed woodpecker under the Endangered Species Act in the Sierra Nevada, Oregon's Eastern Cascades and the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota.
It is the first federal petition to recognize the ecological significance and seek protection of post-fire habitat, an expert said.
In addition to fire suppression, the groups contend post-fire salvage logging combined with commercial thinning of green forests is eliminating what little remains of the bird's habitat, mostly in national forests where it has no legal protection.
"Intensely burned forest habitat not only has no legal protection, but standard practice on private and public lands is to actively eliminate it," the petition said. "When fire and insect outbreaks create excellent woodpecker habitat, salvage logging promptly destroys it."
Chad Hanson, executive director the Earth Island's John Muir Project based in Cedar Ridge, Calif., filed the petition Wednesday with the Interior Department's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. Co-petitioners are the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Ariz., the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in Fossil, Ore., and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyo.
Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis, said the black-backed woodpecker has been eating beetles in fire-killed stands of conifer forests for millions of years and specifically in North American forests for "many thousand years - since the last Ice Age."
"Now, it's very rare," he said.
The best science suggests...
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Logging and controlled burns in northern michigan brought the Kirtland Warbler back from the brink of extinction.
In the 50s there were a handful of breeding pairs nesting in a 3000 acre tract in northern Michigan and now they’re turning up in the upper peninsula and in Wisconsin.
Profitable human activity saved them from extinction.
Sheesh! It is not our jobs to adapt to critters, it is their job to adapt to us!
They can come down to Texas. We have plenty of burned timber from last years wildfires.
rare unless they vote DEMOCRAT
the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance is in for the money ?
Outdoor/environmental ping
Most of the National Forest in the west are ready for the great burn...the bark beetle has killed millions of acres of trees...but I think the bark battle must be an endangered??
This first thing we should do is find all of the scientists and environuts who want this bird to be protected. Then we have their homes or residences burned to the ground. Next, declare their properties an environmental refuge for the next million years with no development allowed whatsoever. Then force them to live in thatch huts and cannot have any modern conveniences at all.
Some one has to make the sacrifice for these birds, right? Let those who worship them be the first to do so.
The mountain pine beetle’s natural controls are Cold winters and Forest fires, the woodpeckers just get the leftovers.
Cuando me haga ping, ping a mi favor en español. Gracias!
A short intro, then a lot of words/big buildup, and boffo finish:
Then the black-backed, beetle-eating woodpecker turned to the Ivory billed woodpecker and the red headed woodpecker and said,
“Gee guys, I dunno about beech or birch, or beetles, but that’s the best piece of ash I’ve ever had my pecker in.”
AT least those birds really exist. Here in Arkansas, some yahoo takes some grainy movie footage of a Pileated woodpecker, claimed it was a formerly believed extinct Ivory Billed Woodpecker (there was not enough detail in the bad video to make a positive ID), and vast acres were shut down to a lot of the former use.
Millions of dollars and many teams from some of the top Universities and other research organizations have come in and combed the area and have found ZERO evidence of an Ivory Bill. Lots of Pileated, which look very similar to it (and indeed - there is a natural color phase that looks a LOT like the Ivory Bill). Further, the place where the footage was supposedly taken does not match the normal environment the Ivory Bill favored - but it does fit perfectly the preferred habitat for... Pileated Woodpeckers.
But much like the hoax formerly known as “Manmade Global Warming”, those with power just won’t let go.
Har!
(BTW, the ‘peckers in question are no kin of mine!)
I’d heard that someone claimed to have discovered IBWs down there & had suspicions about the motives.
I was doing a little research on black bears recently, and found that they’re now classified into a wide range of “subspecies” based on slight color variations. Not surprisingly, several of those “subspecies” are listed as endangered or threatened on either the state or federal level, even where the species itself is abundant.
I wonder what industries were emerging in all those areas where the “subspecies” were suddenly “discovered”...
Just cause a bunch of scientist can’t find them doesn’t mean they are endangered. Just like the spotted owl they may not be looking that hard due to their agenda driven science.
Pray for America
Strange. There have been quite a few major fires throughout the west in the last twenty years.
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