POWERGRAMS

26 A week-old hatchling steadies itself, with no awareness that the new bands on its legs are helping rebuild the national population of an endangered species. Through a continuing partnership of Alabama Power, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the red-cockaded woodpecker is making a comeback along the shores of Lake Mitchell. The bird has been on the Endangered Species List since it was begun in 1970, in part because of the degradation of the longleaf pine forests where the rare bird lives. Longleaf forests once covered 92 million acres from Virginia to Texas to Florida. Years of industrial development and timber cutting has reduced the expanse to 3 percent of its original size. "There are literally hundreds of plants that occur in the longleaf pine ecosystem," said Eric Spadgenske, an FWS biologist. "It's as diverse as the rain forest. It's as diverse as anything in the world. Many studies have shown well over 100 different species of plants in a square meter." The longleaf pine is where the red-cockaded woodpecker makes its home in tree cavities, and the surrounding open habitat provides a life cycle of bugs and plants on which the ecosystem thrives. "The really important thing about the longleaf pine ecosystem isn't even the longleaf pine," said Spadgenske. "It's the ground cover, the grasses and the forbs that are encouraged by fires. A lot of these plants don't reproduce without fire." Most of the birds, amphibians and reptiles dependent on this ecosystem are in decline because of the loss of habitat carved down to small areas, mostly in national and state forests. "All of the species that were dependent on that ecosystem – the red-cockaded woodpecker included – have declined precipitously," said Spadgenske. "Many of them have become endangered, and at some level imperiled, because of the loss of this ecosystem. And it's fragmented; fragmentation is an important component of this habitat loss." Only six longleaf forests remain in Alabama, and one of those is on Alabama Power land at Lake Mitchell. About 15 years ago, company employees teamed up with the FWS and ADCNR to enhance the habitat and help the endangered woodpecker through the nonprofit Longleaf Alliance. "This is definitely a success story here with Alabama Power," Spadgenske said. "I started coming out here in 2004, after a tornado, and I couldn't believe there were any woodpeckers here. It was so thick with hardwood trees. You couldn't see through the woods at all. We had a meeting with Alabama Power and they asked what it would take. I told them we needed artificial cavities, to start burning, and to start getting rid of this hardwood Spadgenske and Alabama Power employees surveyed the rare birds on Lake Mitchell in June as media looked on.

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