Since the 1960s, when wildlife biologists first began keeping tabs on the woodcock population, the birds' numbers have fallen alarmingly.
For the last three decades, the woodcock population has declined by about 1 percent each year. The latest Woodcock Status Report (PDF) published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service provides details.
Habitat Loss
Many studies have shown that hunting is not what's causing woodcock numbers to fall. Rather, the problem is an ongoing loss of habitat -- the places woodcock need to feed, rest during their migrations, mate, and raise young.
Two main causes are driving this dwindling of habitat.
First, much of the land where woodcock once lived has been taken over by houses, roads, and shopping malls. The second factor is a natural one: As brushy areas mature to become forest, they cease being useful to woodcock.
To boost woodcock numbers, we need to improve and create the early successional habitat that timberdoodles need for feeding, nesting, and rearing young. Creating openings in dense forest and allowing the openings to grow back naturally yields important woodcock habitat.
In 2001 the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies formed a Woodcock Task Force to determine the extent of woodcock habitat loss during the past 30 years and to make recommendations to halt and reverse that trend.
In 2007 the Task Force published the American Woodcock Conservation Plan. The Plan documents a decrease of over 839,000 singing male woodcock across the species' range since the early 1970s. And it advances the goal of halting the population decline by 2012 and achieving population growth by 2022. For further details, examine the American Woodcock Conservation Plan. (PDF)
To return woodcock numbers to those of the early 1970s, approximately 21.3 million acres (8.6 million hectares) of early successional habitat (young forest and shrublands) need to be created.
Helping Woodcock
The Wildlife Management Institute coordinates efforts to achieve woodcock conservation plan goals through a network of Woodcock Regional Initiatives.
Regional Initiatives are planned for all regions of the U.S. and Canada where woodcock breed, through which woodcock migrate, or where they spend the winter. Regional initiatives are advanced by partnerships of individual people, agencies, and organizations committed to restoring woodcock populations to the goals set forth in the Woodcock Conservation Plan.
All Regional Initiatives will rely on the same basic approach:
First, managers and biologists will develop Best Management Practices (BMPs) specific to each region that will improve and create woodcock habitat.
Second, managers will apply the BMPs on Demonstration Areas. These areas may be on public land, such as state and federal wildlife management areas, National Wildlife Refuges, and state and national forests, and on private land.
Third, biologists will count woodcock and monitor how the population responds to habitat improvement. Monitoring may include radio telemetry to let biologists track which habitats woodcock use.
Fourth, the partners in each Initiative will get the word out to other public and private landowners, so that they, too, can help woodcock on their properties. This outreach effort will also inform and educate the public about areas and environments where more young forest is needed, as well as areas where it is not necessary or where it would be unwise to create young forest.
