(The following was provided by The Jones Center at Ichauway.)
Seven pairs of red-cockaded woodpeckers were released Dec. 18 at DNR’s Chickasawhatchee Wildlife Management Area near Albany.
The translocation of the federally threatened birds from two donor sites – the U.S. Army’s Fort Stewart and The Jones Center at Ichauway – was the work of a deep conservation partnership and marked the species’ introduction to Chickasawhatchee in Calhoun County.
Partners included DNR, the Department of Defense (Fort Stewart Army Base), The Jones Center, Tall Timbers, the U.S. Forest Service, The Longleaf Alliance, Casto Environmental Services, Quail Forever and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Red-cockaded woodpeckers were listed under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 due to the loss and degradation of habitat. The species was downlisted from endangered to threatened in October 2024. Translocation efforts across the region involving the cooperation of federal and state agencies and public-private partnerships were a key factor.
Jones Center’s Brandon Rutledge captures red-cockaded woodpeckers for translocation (Ben Thesing/The Jones Center at Ichauway)
Matt Elliott, Wildlife Conservation Section chief in DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division, noted that Chickasawhatchee is Georgia’s fifth state-owned wildlife management area with red-cockaded woodpeckers.
“When I started working for the Wildlife Resources Division in 2004, we had none,” Elliott said. “The change since that time reflects the recovery of the species that has been made through the hard work of our division’s staff and our partners on federal and private lands, and I am extremely proud of them.”
Coordinated by DNR senior wildlife biologist Joe Burnam, five pairs of birds were captured and transported from Fort Stewart in southeast Georgia, supplemented by two pairs from The Jones Center at Ichauway, for a total of seven female-and-male pairs translocated to Chickasawhatchee. Fort Stewart has one of the Southeast’s largest populations of red-cockaded woodpeckers and has contributed to translocation efforts since the late 1990s. The birds moved to Chickasawhatchee are being monitored.
Current and former Jones Center biologists who managed Ichauway’s red-cockaded woodpecker population from 1999 until now took part in the translocation last month, marking a full-circle moment for The Jones Center program. In just over 25 years, the number of red-cockaded woodpeckers at Ichauway has grown from one male woodpecker in 1999 to 57 potential breeding groups in 2025, an estimated population of 180 birds capable of contributing to translocation efforts. The recovery was made possible by numerous translocations between 1999-2015. Donor sites included Apalachicola National Forest in Florida, Fort Stewart, Fort Benning Army Base, Eglin Air Force Base, Francis Marion National Forest in South Carolina, Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge and eight private properties in the Red Hills region of south Georgia and north Florida.
Jones Center Conservation Coordinator Brandon Rutledge and forestry and wildlife biologist Zach Henshaw said they “were honored to play a role in the ongoing recovery of the species and to demonstrate excellence in natural resource management through the introduction of RCWs” on Chickasawhatchee. “This represents what conservation should be all about: people working together across boundaries as positive stewards of natural resources,” Rutledge said.
At the nearly 20,000-acre WMA, that effort has helped more than just a single species. Brian Vickery, southwest Georgia region supervisor for DNR’s Game Management Section, said teamwork and years of habitat work including prescribed fire and timber thinnings have enhanced conditions at Chickasawhatchee for a variety of wildlife that benefit from open pinelands, from northern bobwhites and gopher tortoises to red-cockaded woodpeckers and white-tailed deer.
“Quail management and woodpecker management go hand in hand,” Vickery said. “The deer population is also doing well – it’s an ecosystem approach.”