Excerpt from "After the Storm: Homes for an Endangered Species"

In 1989, Francis Marion National Forest was home to thousands of mature longleaf pines and the world’s second largest population of red-cockaded woodpeckers. “In one night,” said Craig Watson, then the forest’s Wildlife Program Manager, “all of that changed.”

When Hurricane Hugo rolled over the South Carolina forest with gusts of 160 mph, it uprooted cypress and centuries-old live oaks. But longleaf pines, the trees into which RCWs most often dig their nest cavities, were hit the hardest. The morning after Hugo, only 229 of 1765 RCW cavity trees were standing. An estimated 63 percent of that forest’s red-cockaded woodpeckers--already an endangered species--were dead. . . .

Despite the loss of habitat, the RCWs had one thing going for them. At the Savannah River Site, where the population of RCWs had dwindled to 5, biologist David Allen had been at work on a technique to construct and insert artificial RCW cavities into living pines. . . .