FORT BRAGG'S WOODPECKERS National Public Radio, Morning Edition May 9, 2002 BOB EDWARDS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards. Congress today is scheduled to debate whether the Pentagon can exempt itself from national environmental laws. The armed services say rules protecting migrating birds and endangered species cripple their ability to train soldiers in real-life settings. They want to write more lenient rules for themselves. In North Carolina, however, the people who run the Army's biggest military reservation have found that having an endangered species around can actually help them do their job. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports. CHRISTOPHER JOYCE reporting: A haze of cordite smoke floats over a gunnery range at Ft. Bragg. (Soundbite of gunshots) JOYCE: A half-dozen soldiers on a sand dune are firing live rounds from a hone their weapons skills here at Ft. Bragg than anywhere else. Down the road a few miles, the guns get bigger. (Soundbite of explosions) JOYCE: That's an artillery battery, a half-dozen 155mm Howitzers dug into a clearing in the forest. You need a lot of space to practice with big guns and tanks and helicopters. Ft. Bragg is big--161,000 acres, mostly forests and fields--but the rest of the world is slowly closing in. (Soundbite of traffic) Unidentified Woman: Hi. May I take your order, please? Unidentified Man #1: Yeah, good morning. Could I get a cup of coffee, please? JOYCE: You can cruise in to a Burger King or McDonald's right outside the Ft. Bragg fence line. Strip malls and housing developments have grown around the boundary like moss. That causes big problems. Real ammunition makes a lot of noise. So do helicopters. There's drifting smoke. People complain, sometimes with good reason. Colonel TAD DAVIS (Ft. Bragg Garrison Commander): Occasionally, we'll have situations arise where a soldier lands in the swimming pool of somebody's back yard because of a change in, you know, the wind condition. JOYCE: Ft. Bragg garrison commander Colonel Tad Davis says that actually happened. Creeping sprawl--the Army calls it encroachment--made training ever more difficult. To make matters even worse, wildlife was taking refuge inside the fort, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, a bird protected by the Endangered Species Act. The Army had to curtail live fire training and feared that soldiers couldn't even dig foxholes. Col. DAVIS: We'd go out there and simply just scratch out a little square in the sand and say, `This would normally be, you know, a 6-by-6-by-6 with, you know, 18 inches overhead cover,' and then it really degrades the value and the quality of the training. And so then you have a soldier that deploys to Afghanistan, and he really doesn't know what right looks like and then you're in trouble. Mr. RICK STUDAMAN(PhD) (The Nature Conservancy): These are recent aerial photographs. (Soundbite of paper rustling) JOYCE: Rick Studaman works for The Nature Conservancy near Ft. Bragg. His map of Ft. Bragg documents why the endangered woodpeckers are flocking to the fort. Mr. STUDAMAN: This development up to the fences at Ft. Bragg causes the population of red-cockaded woodpeckers to shrink back from the edges of the installation as well because their habitat outside the fence is now lost. Everything is getting crowded to the center of Ft. Bragg. JOYCE: The Nature Conservancy and the Army have enlisted the woodpecker to forge a novel solution to encroachment and to recover woodpecker habitat. They've come up with about $7 million each for something called the Private Lands Initiative. The conservancy uses the money to buy or protect whatever's left of the undeveloped land around Ft. Bragg. These long-leaf pine forests are then preserved as woodpecker habitat and as a buffer between the fort and development and a place where the Army can train soldiers, though without live fire, all in the name of the woodpecker. Or as the Army likes to call it, the RCW. (Soundbite of bird calls) JOYCE: Keeping the woodpecker population thriving alongside soldiers is now a full-time job for Susan Ladd Miller, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Today, Miller is trying to flush woodpeckers out of a nest cavity about 20 feet up a pine tree. Just below the cavity, woodpeckers have punctured the bark. A sticky sap oozes out, coating the trunk like candle wax. Ms. SUSAN LADD MILLER (Biologist, US Fish and Wildlife Service): They're creating that resin flow, all that sappy resin flow around their cavity to protect from rat snakes or other snake predators that will climb up the tree and then go in and eat the young. JOYCE: To make sure the woodpecker population is breeding successfully, Miller helps band birds and count nests and eggs. (Soundbite of squeaking noise) JOYCE: Today, she and her assistant are using a small video camera on a telescoping pole, called a Peeper. They poke it into nest cavities to see what's inside. So far, all the nests have either been empty or taken over by flying squirrels. Then they get lucky. Unidentified Man #2: Ooh, there's a--oh, God, I haven't seen this yet. Ms. MILLER: OK. Unidentified Man #2: Woodpecker in it. Ms. MILLER: Thanks a lot. JOYCE: What's in there? Unidentified Man #2: A woodpecker. Ms. MILLER: There's an RCW in there. JOYCE: Miller gently guides the end of the camera into the nest cavity. (Soundbite of bird call) Ms. MILLER: You're sitting real good, aren't you? The bird's just going to sit real tight. JOYCE: A video monitor at the bottom of the Peeper clearly shows a bird inside the tree, black and white ladderback stripes on its back, the characteristic red patch on its cheek. Ms. MILLER: Let's just move this way a little bit and see if we can just encourage it to come out. (Soundbite of bird call) JOYCE: Miller wants the bird to come out, so she can tell if there are eggs inside. Ms. MILLER: This is true harassment, but I have permits to do this. (Soundbite of clapping) JOYCE: Finally, the bird flushes, complaining. This doesn't hurt the bird or its eggs, and it's essential to monitoring the health of the population. The camera shows a clutch of four eggs inside. Ms. MILLER: The eggs are actually even looking a little dark and have a lot of sap and dirt on them, so they've been incubating these for a little bit. JOYCE: Well, congratulations. Ms. MILLER: Mm-hmm. First full clutch that we've found. That's great. JOYCE: So far, the species is doing well. Soldiers keep their distance--no camping within 200 feet of a nest--and no heavy vehicles too near. But saving the woodpecker also means keeping its habitat healthy. The bird favors the dwindling long-leaf pine forests of the Southeast. These forests need regular burnings for pine seeds to germinate, a burning that's been suppressed in the past. Now Rick Studaman from the conservancy and the Army send teams out to purposefully burn the forests. (Soundbite of plane) JOYCE: You can see evidence of these prescribed fires along the roads in and around Ft. Bragg. (Soundbite of fire) Mr. STUDAMAN: We burned this place about a week ago, and as you can see, this old stump is still smoking and putting out actually quite a big of smoke. And actually, the fire can follow the roots down and burn all of the root material and leave tunnels, which actually makes great habitat for all kinds of other animals that need burrows. JOYCE: It really has a distinctive odor, doesn't it? Mr. STUDAMAN: It's the wonderful smell of pitch pine burning. It's not a disagreeable odor at all. I really like it. (Soundbite of fire) JOYCE: It took years for the Army and environmentalists to forge the Private Lands Initiative. While some in the Pentagon and Congress remain skeptical of environmental laws, Bragg commander Colonel Davis says wildlife and soldiers can co-exist. He's preached that gospel to other garrison commanders and says many have shown interest. Col. DAVIS: And if you can demonstrate to the senior leadership of the Army, to the senior leadership of the Department of Defense, that we can achieve all of these things in a transparent way that still allows a soldier and the leaders to go out and train just like they would if they were in combat, then that's how you really show success. JOYCE: New land for military training is in short supply. So is wildlife habitat. In North Carolina, an unconventional marriage has created new land for both. And there's more in the works: a proposed national wildlife refuge right next to Ft. Bragg for woodpeckers and for soldiers. Christopher Joyce, NPR News, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. EDWARDS: There's more about the red-cockaded woodpecker on the Web site: npr.org. It's 11 minutes before the hour. Reported by Christopher Joyce Transcript and tapes available at: http://www.NPR.ORG All right reserved by National Public Radio