Bird watchers may be able to get more sightings of the red-cockaded woodpecker at the Big Branch Marsh Wildlife Refuge, thanks to efforts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ant the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

The rare red-cockaded woodpecker, (picoides borealis), used to be a common sight among the longleaf pine ecosystem that used to cover more than 90 million acres in the southeastern part of the United States, said Jody DeMeyere, park ranger at the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Lacombe.

However, with commercial timber harvesting, farming, and the encroachment of urban areas, the woodpecker began to lose its ecosystem. Big Branch was a customary nesting site for the woodpecker, but DeMeyere said Hurricane Katrina drastically reduced the number of woodpeckers. DeMeyere said currently there are 60 of the rare woodpeckers living in Big Branch.

Neil Lalonde of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services puts an identification band on the leg of a red-cockaded woodpecker he captured in the Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge in Lacombe.

But several months ago, the USFWS came up with a plan to increase the population of the red-cockaded woodpeckers at Big Branch. Biologist Eric Baka with the USFWS came to Big Branch and taught the rangers how to band the birds with colored identification tags.

“With the training, we became eligible to accept the woodpecker from other areas,” DeMeyere said.

Then Baka and fellow biologist Neil Lalonde went to the Kisatchie National Forest in Fort Polk, and managed to catch four young red-cockaded woodpeckers in nets. After banding the birds, the two biologists drove four hours to Big Branch and released the four newcomers into the marshy wilds of the refuge. The program is called the Western Zone Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Translocation Cooperative. Besides the USFWS and the LDWF, the program includes the Department of Defense and private landowners, all who share information, research and surplus birds. The idea of relocating the birds is to prevent inbreeding and improve the genetic pool of existing woodpecker populations. The red-cockaded woodpecker is about seven inches long, has a black cap of feathers on its head and nape that encircle white cheek patches.

DeMeyere said it is the hope of the Big Branch rangers that the population of the rare bird gets big enough so they let other refuges have some of the woodpeckers.

To help out, the park rangers are trying to recreate the bird’s preferred ecosystem by planting more longleaf pine trees, thinning the woods with controlled burnings and building artificial nest cavities. The bird likes to nest in the cavities of the longleaf pine tree, and rangers hope that by building these artificial homes, more red-cockaded woodpeckers will mate, lay eggs and increase their population.