Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers Around Tallahassee

Red-cockaded woodpeckers live in two belts of old pine woods on either side of Tallahassee: the Apalachicola National Forest to the south and the Red Hills plantations to the north.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says Florida hosts approximately 25 percent of the nation's red-cockaded woodpeckers and that the largest Florida populations are managed on public land at the Apalachicola National Forest and Eglin Air Force Base.

The forest population south of Tallahassee is large and counted. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2024 reclassification rule reports an Apalachicola National Forest survey estimate of 833 active clusters in 2018, before Hurricane Michael, and 857 in the 2019 survey, and treats the forest, St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge and Tate's Hell State Forest as one demographic population.

FWC's own state totals do not line up. Its Safe Harbor page estimates 1,100 active family groups in Florida, while its red-cockaded woodpecker FAQ puts Florida's population at 2,500 nesting pairs, and FWC estimates 55 to 85 active groups on private lands, with the largest concentrations in the south-central and southern parts of the state. North of Tallahassee, Tall Timbers says the gamebird preserves of the Greater Red Hills support the largest community of red-cockaded woodpeckers on private lands.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers around Tallahassee depend on fire because fire keeps pine forests open.

FWC's FAQ says the birds, like those in the Apalachicola National Forest, are typically found in open, park-like pine forests maintained by fire and recommends prescribed burning on a 1- to 3-year rotation, roller chopping of saw palmetto thickets and thinning of dense timber as management for landowners.

The loss of fire is part of why the bird declined. FWC attributes the population drop largely to habitat destruction from logging, development and aggressive control of forest fires, which historically maintained the open pinelands, and says almost 97 percent of red-cockaded woodpecker habitat has been lost in the past 100 years. FWC's prescribed fire page lists the red-cockaded woodpecker among Florida's rare, fire-adapted animals that cannot thrive without fire, the same practice Tall Timbers studies on the Red Hills properties north of Tallahassee.

Agencies give different space needs for a woodpecker group in Tallahassee-area pine woods. FWC says a group requires at least 75 acres for nesting and feeding, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service species page says a typical group territory ranges from about 125 to 200 acres, with reported territories from around 60 acres upward.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are the only southeastern bird that excavates cavities in living pines, FWC says, and in the forests around Tallahassee the work takes years.

For pine woods such as those around Tallahassee, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says longleaf pines are most commonly preferred, that cavities are excavated in mature pines generally more than 80 years old, often trees whose heartwood has been softened by red heart disease, and that excavation takes one to six years. Another passage on the same federal page describes cavity trees as living pines at least 65 to 80 years old and typically much older.

A cluster of cavity trees may include one to 20 or more trees on 3 to 60 acres, and averages about 10 acres. Active cavity trees in the pine woods of the Apalachicola National Forest and the Red Hills are easy to spot: the federal page says the birds keep small resin wells flowing around the entrance, apparently as a defense against rat snakes and possibly other predators. Tall Timbers' Stoddard Bird Lab says the cavities also provide homes to over 30 other species, including frogs, squirrels and wood ducks.

Hurricane Michael was the biggest recent blow to the Apalachicola National Forest population, and artificial cavities were the response.

The 2024 federal rule says Michael came ashore near Mexico Beach on October 10, 2018, as a Category 4 storm and that more than 1,500 cavity trees were blown down or damaged across the Apalachicola National Forest, Silver Lake WMA, Jones Ecological Research Center and Tate's Hell State Forest.

Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service final rule, 89 FR 85294, October 25, 2024.

The federal rule says the hurricane did not change the resilience size class of these populations. At Silver Lake WMA, west of Tallahassee, 154 cavity trees were damaged or lost, and more than 90 artificial cavities were installed within two weeks of the storm.

Tall Timbers reports that red-cockaded woodpeckers in the Red Hills are close to a regional recovery goal.

Its 2023 survey article says the Stoddard Bird Lab found 269 territories occupied by woodpeckers, 210 of them paired, the most the Red Hills has seen in over a century, against a goal set with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources of 250 breeding pairs; the lab surveys Red Hills properties every five years.

On its own land north of Tallahassee, Tall Timbers released woodpeckers in 2006, and its Spring 2015 eNews reported a young male excavating a natural cavity about 300 meters from the nearest artificial cavities, leaving the station with 10 potential breeding groups.

Source: Tall Timbers eNews, Spring 2015.

The 2026 drought hit the Red Hills nests. A Tall Timbers article dated October 12, 2026 says 97 percent of the nests its biologists monitored in 2026 experienced some brood loss, including total nest failure, in a nest dataset that dates back to 2018, and that adding cavities for helper birds is one way to support groups through dry years. Tall Timbers bands nestlings each year and has opened banding to the public, as in a May 4, 2019 event at its campus at 13093 Henry Beadel Road in Tallahassee that was limited to 25 participants.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers around Tallahassee are no longer listed as endangered, but they remain federally threatened.

FWC's FAQ says the species found in the Apalachicola National Forest and the Red Hills was placed on the federal Endangered Species List on October 13, 1970, and was downlisted to threatened on October 25, 2024, and that Florida adopted the Federally-designated Threatened status in 2025. The final rule itself was published October 25, 2024 and took effect November 25, 2024; it also changed the listed scientific name from Picoides borealis to Dryobates borealis.

State listing of the birds in the Apalachicola National Forest and elsewhere has shifted over the years. FWC says Florida listed the bird as threatened or endangered from 1974 through 2003, reclassified it as a Species of Special Concern in 2003, and listed it as Federally-designated Endangered in 2010.

Range-wide, the Service's reclassification questions and answers estimate fewer than 10,000 birds, about 1,500 to 3,500 active clusters, around the time of listing in 1970, and a conservative 7,800 active clusters today. Private landowners near Tallahassee can join the conservation benefit agreements formerly called Safe Harbor; the Service says they have enrolled 459 non-federal landowners on about 2.5 million acres, while FWC's Safe Harbor page says more than 620,000 acres are enrolled nationally, so the two agencies report different totals. FWC also manages the woodpecker on 6.5 million acres of wildlife management areas.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by rereading the FWC Safe Harbor, woodpecker FAQ and prescribed fire pages, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service species page, reclassification Q and A and 2024 final rule, and four Tall Timbers pages on its own Red Hills woodpecker work.