As cities continue expanding, forested areas are becoming scarcer, and less dense. That's bad news for the wildlife that call those areas home. A University of Cincinnati doctoral student is studying what local areas are important to North America's largest woodpecker.
Pileated woodpeckers are about the size of crows and are easily recognized by their large size and red heads, or crests. Cartoonist Walter Lantz used the pileated woodpecker as his inspiration for the character Woody Woodpecker.
"The pileated woodpecker is not considered as a vulnerable species, but it is an indicator species for mature and older forests," says Ruijia Hu, a doctoral student in UC's Department of Geography and GIS (Geographic Information Systems and Science). "I wanted to study this bird and to try to see how the mature and old forest has been changing through time in Hamilton County."
Hu has been studying pileated woodpeckers and their habitat and recently presented her findings at an American Association of Geographers' conference. She co-authored the study with UC Professor Susanna Tong.
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The pileated woodpecker population is currently considered strong, but Hu and Tong say it hasn't always been that way. They saw huge declines in the late 18th and 19th centuries, Hu says, when forests were being destroyed to make room for agriculture.
"When reforestation started, it recovered," she says.
Other species weren't as fortunate. Hu points to the ivory-billed woodpecker that used to be found across the southern part of the U.S. It has largely disappeared, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved todeclare it extinct in 2021. Since then, there is debate on whether it is really gone, but suffice to say, it is certainly not a thriving species.
Hu says the key to ensuring birds like Ohio's pileated woodpecker don't follow suit is protecting suburban habitat for them.
The birds like mature woodlands with lots of grubs and other insects, and dead trees. They also peck out cavities in trees for nesting — once vacated, these benefit other animals like fox squirrels and owls.
Hu combined remote-sensing data with eight years worth of sightings from naturalists and birders recorded on the eBird website to chart the best habitats for Hamilton County for pileated woodpeckers.
"We found that the riparian corridors along the the waterways in Hamilton County provided very good habitat for pileated woodpecker, especially the waterways along the Little Miami River because there's been a lot of reforestation efforts ... along the Little Miami River.
"That's actually the largest patch and it has the highest habitat quality we found for the pileated woodpecker," she says.
Hu says they also recommend keeping up the restoration efforts along the Mill Creek and encouraging the trees to reach maturity so they'll provide good habitat for the woodpecker.
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The findings were then turned into a model identifying these critical habitat corridors in hopes, she says, of helping planners and park managers "make better decisions about preserving or restoring the most valuable contiguous forest patches."
Once the pileated woodpeckers' habitat patches are identified, Hu says they intend to look for and at the corridors that connect those patches, and model how different future land use plans may affect them.
The problem of ensuring plenty of habitat isn't going to be solved overnight, say Hu and Tong.
“It's not just about planting more trees. The birds need mature forest, so it could take 30 to 50 years to replace their habitat. At least we can protect these forest corridors and see that existing trees reach maturity.”
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