Tennessee wildlife officials say a bird that vanished from the state more than 30 years ago could soon be heard again in places like Lynchburg. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), working with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, recently announced a plan to reintroduce the red-cockaded woodpecker – a federally protected species that has not been seen in Tennessee since 1994. The goal is to return breeding birds to restored habitat and have them on the landscape again by 2028.

The red-cockaded woodpecker was once common across the Southeast, including Tennessee, when this region was a patchwork of open pine savannas and oak-pine woodlands maintained by natural fire. Over the last century, that landscape disappeared. Fire suppression, logging of old-growth pines, and fragmentation by development stripped away the specific type of mature pine forest these woodpeckers need to survive. By the early 1990s, the population here had collapsed to the point that the last known bird in Tennessee was documented in Cherokee National Forest in 1994, and the species was considered extirpated – locally extinct.

Biologists say bringing the bird back isn’t as simple as trapping a few and turning them loose. The plan starts with repairing the bird’s home. State and federal crews have been restoring roughly 1,200 acres inside and around Savage Gulf State Natural Area in nearby Beersheeba Springs – an area of mature shortleaf pine and open woodland on the Cumberland Plateau between Murfreesboro and Chattanooga – to resemble historical pine savanna. That work includes thinning timber and using controlled burns to open the understory, so the habitat looks and functions more like it did 200 to 300 years ago. Officials say that kind of “fire-managed” forest used to exist widely across Middle Tennessee, including parts of southern Middle Tennessee not far from Lynchburg.

Though the first release site is Savage Gulf on the Cumberland Plateau, TWRA says the goal is to restore the kind of open pine habitat that once covered much of southern Middle Tennessee – including the ridgelines and farm edges around Moore County.

Once the habitat is ready, Tennessee plans to receive red-cockaded woodpeckers from established colonies in other Southern states through a federal transfer program. The birds will be released into the restored stands and monitored to see if they form breeding “clusters” – the family-style social groups this species builds in living pines. The red-cockaded woodpecker was one of the first birds ever placed on the federal endangered species list in 1970. After decades of recovery work across the Southeast, it has been downlisted to “threatened,” but wildlife managers say it is still vulnerable and still requires active management to survive.

State leaders are calling the project a conservation milestone – not just for birdwatchers, but for Tennessee’s whole natural system. They point out that the same old-growth-style pine woodland that supports the woodpecker also supports other rare species like the northern pine snake, monarch butterflies, and even federally listed plants. In plain terms: if we can bring back a woodpecker that Tennessee completely lost in 1994, we’re also proving we can keep the rest of our native wildlife on the landscape for future generations. TWRA officials say public interest is already high, and they’re framing the effort as something all Tennesseans –  including small towns in southern Middle Tennessee – can take pride in.

If this works, kids growing up here could someday hear a bird their parents have never even seen.

To learn more about the efforts, visit the State Wildlife Action Plan website by clicking here. •

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