Landowners Say They, and Not Birds, Are Endangered : Conservation: Federal law aims to preserve surviving woodpeckers, among others. But critics say that can penalize people who preserve the birds’ habitat.

Ben Cone wanted to create some good bird habitat on his property near the North Carolina coast. It wound up costing him more than $2 million.

The quail loved it when he burned and cleared underbrush on his property. So did the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.

Now, 1,600 acres of prime 60- to 70-year-old forest are home to the 7-inch black-and-white bird with a white splotch on its cheek. The federal Endangered Species Act won’t allow Cone to cut the timber or do anything else to damage the bird’s habitat.

“For doing what (environmentalists) want, I get a damaging economic hit,” he said.

The law also has frustrated wildlife officials. It protects existing woodpeckers, but doesn’t encourage landowners to help the bird population grow.

Cone, for instance, plans to cut some timberland not yet inhabited by the woodpeckers. “I can’t afford to let them take over the whole place,” he said.

The woodpecker was placed on the endangered list in 1970. But, in the last decade, its population on privately owned land has declined more than 45%.

It’s unlikely the birds are going elsewhere. Woodpecker groups of one to seven birds need about 100 acres to survive. They don’t migrate; if left with a sliver of forest, they eventually die out.

In South Carolina, wildlife officials estimate there are 896 of the endangered birds, with 400 on private land and the rest on state or federally owned property. That’s the highest concentration on private land in the Southeast.

Unlike the Northwest, where logging restrictions to save the northern spotted owl have been placed mostly on government-owned land, restrictions to save the woodpecker in the Southeast fall heavily on private property owners.

“When you start to interfere with people’s private property rights, they’re gonna howl,” said Dwight Stewart, a private forester.

Henry C. Bynum worries about property his family has owned for more than 40 years. A private forestry company discovered red-cockaded woodpeckers on the land in 1992.

Though his family doesn’t depend on timber harvest income, Bynum sees the 1,600 acres as a sort of savings account.

“It’s been passed down, and it’s been cut and reforested. I hoped someday to pass it to my children. But it looks like I’ll be passing it to the woodpeckers,” Bynum said.

Stewart and two partners owned land that was under restrictions because woodpeckers on neighboring U.S. Forest Service property foraged there.

The Forest Service bought the property, but Stewart said he and his partners lost money on 10,000 acres of timber they couldn’t harvest.

“There’s going to have to be some compromises,” Stewart said. “If we don’t, people are not going to manage for the red-cockaded woodpecker.”

Environmentalists stress that the bird is an important piece of a bigger ecological puzzle.

“If you remove one (species), you don’t know what the consequence for the others will be,” said Michael Bean of the Environmental Defense Fund. “Our own welfare depends in the long run on maintaining biological diversity.”

But if it’s that important, a landowner shouldn’t have to absorb all the cost, said Joe Young, chairman of the South Carolina Forestry Assn.

“If what he’s losing is for the good of the many, then the many should pay for it,” Young said.

Saving timber to protect a single woodpecker group can cost a landowner about $100,000, said Al Epps, a private forester.

Endangerment of the northern spotted owl and the woodpecker shows that a unique ecosystem, the old-growth forest, is disappearing, Bean said.

In the 1800s, the United States had 92 million acres of longleaf pine, the woodpecker’s home of choice. Now there are 1.8 million acres, according to Ralph Costa, woodpecker recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Clemson.

Where once there were as many as 400,000 woodpecker groups, now there are about 4,000, Costa said.

The economic forces arrayed against saving the small bird can be enormous.

Timber is one of the region’s largest industries. In South Carolina, for instance, the $5 billion-a-year industry is the state’s third largest behind chemicals and textiles.

Some government officials are searching for a compromise between environmental goals and landowners’ and business concerns.

Georgia officials agreed in September to look at ways landowners with 1,000 acres or less could harvest timber while also helping the woodpeckers. South Carolina officials are discussing similar options.

Webb Smathers, a wildlife economist at Clemson University, proposes giving landowners economic credits for having birds reproduce on their property. The more juvenile birds produced, the more credits earned. Young birds eventually could be moved to a public forest set up as a recovery site, and the privately owned timber could be harvested.

The woodpecker credits, like credits given to businesses for reducing air pollution, could be bought and sold, Smathers said.