Conservation

Since the 1960s, when wildlife biologists began keeping close tabs on the woodcock population, the birds' numbers have fallen. For the last three decades, the woodcock population has declined by about 1 percent each year. The American Woodcock Population Status Report published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (see attachment at the bottom of this page) provides details.

Like all wildlife, woodcock need habitat in which to breed, feed, and find shelter./E. Dresser

The American woodcock is on the WatchList of Shorebirds of Conservation Concern in the United States of America - 2015, a report submitted as part of the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan. The National Audubon Society ranks it as a priority bird species of significant conservation need. And many states throughout the woodcock's range consider it a Species of Greatest Conservation Need.

Habitat Loss

Wildlife biologists believe that hunting is not what's causing woodcock numbers to fall. Rather, the problem is an ongoing loss of habitat -- the places that woodcock need to feed, rest during their migrations, mate, and raise young.

Much land where woodcock once lived has been taken over by houses, roads, shopping malls, and other urban and suburban development. More important, as young forest and shrubland areas mature to become forest, they cease being useful to woodcock.

Woodcock habitat is lush and thick, as shown by this stand of shrubland in Maine./K. Boland

To boost woodcock numbers, we must create and renew the young forest that these birds need for feeding, nesting, and rearing young. Creating openings in forest and allowing them to grow back naturally yields important living zones for woodcock -- and for a great many other wild species that also need this sort of habitat, from chestnut-sided warblers to ruffed grouse, cottontail rabbits to bobcats, and including such reptiles as box and wood turtles.

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 more than 839,000 singing male woodcock across the species' range since the early 1970s. And it advances and explains the goal of halting the population's decline by 2012 and achieving population growth by 2022.

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. Not only do woodcock benefit from more young forest, but so do more than 60 other wild species.

Helping Woodcock Region by Region

Conservationists have set up a network of Regional Initiatives linked to Bird Conservation Regions, or BCRs, fundamental biological units recognized by the U.S. North American Bird Conservation Initiative. Regional initiatives rely on the same basic approach:

Many kinds of wildlife, like this black-throated blue warbler, need the same kind of young forest habitat that woodcock do./T. Berriman

Managers and biologists develop Best Management Practices (BMPs) for improving and creating young-forest habitat.

Land managers apply the Best Management Practices on Demonstration Areas. These areas may be on state and federal wildlife areas, National Wildlife Refuges, and state and national forests, and on land owned by companies, land trusts, and private individuals.

Biologists count woodcock and monitor population response to habitat improvement. Radio-telemetry-based research lets biologists track which habitats woodcock use and when they use them.

Partners in each initiative work to get the word out to other public and private landowners, so that they can see woodcock habitat on recognized demonstration areas and then undertake habitat management to help woodcock on their own properties. This outreach effort helps inform and educate the public about areas and environments where more young forest is needed, as well as areas and environments where it is not necessary or where it would be unwise to create young forest.