Habitat Restoration and Management

Longleaf pine once covered ninety million acres across the Southeast.  But over time, clear-cutting reduced this unique forest to just three percent of it's original range. One of the casualties has been the Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  These federally-endangered birds have dwindled to about one percent of their original population.  So Audubon South Carolina is now restoring portions of the original forest, joining with other groups across the Southeast that are also devoted to this effort. 

Planting single pines won’t do the trick, as Red-cockaded Woodpeckers need 120 to 200 acres of habitat to thrive.  They also prefer older pines, which doesn’t mesh well with the typical plant-and-cut cycle of the lumber industry.  

Our solution is to restore 661 acres of longleaf habitat at our Silver Bluff facility and 230 acres of longleaf at Beidler Forest — with plans to restore more acres in the future.  We'll also harvest the wood carefully, always leaving habitat for the woodpeckers.

The conversion of grasslands and prairies to agriculture, silviculture, and urbanization has resulted in a 50% decline in grassland bird species. Grasslands once stretched for miles across the Piedmont of South Carolina. Audubon South Carolina has been working to convert former pasture and agricultural land back into grasslands and Longleaf Pine savannas to restore these habitats to the quality that supports grassland bird species in South Carolina, like Loggerhead Shrike, Eastern Meadowlark, Field Sparrow, Northern Bobwhite, Bachman's Sparrow, Prairie Warbler, Henslow's Sparrow, American Kestrel, and more. 

Using our Silver Bluff and Beidler Sanctuaries as demonstration sites, Audubon South Carolina has already introduced more than 300 landowners and land managers to these bird-friendly methods.  We are continuing to grow our outreach program to land owners to share these management techniques. Please reach out if you're an interested landowner! 

Our workshops focus on bottomland hardwoods, an ecosystem that's critically important to dozens of bird species as well as other wildlife.  And we give the most attention to 13 priority species, because if we protect them, we automatically protect the whole ecosystem and the other creatures in it. Through this work we have seen the strategy result in the birds coming back to the land. There aren't many places where you can see and hear Bachman's Sparrows, Prothonotary Warblers, Swainson's Warblers, and Bobwhite like you can at our Sanctuaries. 

Wetlands provide incredibly vital habitat.  They also clean and filter water, and store floodwater so that it doesn’t overwhelm communities downstream.  Sometimes filling wetlands can’t be avoided.  When that happens, federal law requires protection and/or restoration of wetlands elsewhere to mitigate the damage. 

Over the years, Audubon South Carolina has protected nearly 7,000 acres of wetlands using federal mitigation funds.  Soon we’ll be designated an official “umbrella mitigation bank” – which means a steady flow of cash to protect and/or restore wetlands that provide habitat for some of our state’s most vulnerable birds. 

We’ll start with 770 acres at Beidler Forest that were ditched and drained years ago, then turned into a minimally productive, marginally valuable tree farm.  When we restore the natural hydrology, Prothonotary Warblers, Wood Ducks, Swallowtail Kites, Northern Waterthrushes, Belted Kingfishers, and other birds should return.