With their mother watching warily from a nearby tree, two or three pink and featherless red-cockaded woodpecker hatchlings received tracking bands from The St. Joe Company biologists on May 1. The week-old chicks are the first this spring at the 1,566-acre Wetappo Creek Conservation Area in Gulf County. Wetappo is one of two sites where JOE, in partnership with state and federal agencies and Audubon of Florida, is working to restore the red-cockaded woodpecker population.

After JOE biologists found evidence of red-cockaded woodpecker activity at Wetappo several years ago, the company voluntarily placed the area in conservation and has since managed it exclusively for the purpose of restoring woodpecker habitat and boosting the birds' breeding population.

JOE and its partners have improved the habitat by using prescribed fire, building artificial cavities and relocating red-cockaded woodpeckers from other areas to create breeding pairs at Wetappo. Thanks to those efforts, Wetappo's woodpecker population has rebounded and is reproducing. The population consisted of only four male birds when the restoration effort began, and is now up to eight active clusters, each with its own breeding pair, for a total of 18 to 20 adult birds.

In addition to the newly hatched nest, this year Wetappo biologists have located three other active nests where the birds have not yet hatched. And they expect several more nests.

"We had seven nests last year," Jim Moyers, JOE's manager of ecological services said, "and we hope to have eight this year."

On Thursday morning, Moyers climbed about 20 feet up a longleaf pine and gently removed the hatchlings from their nest cavity using a homemade device similar to a small lasso. He brought them to the ground and placed bands on them, then returned them to their nest. The banding does not hurt the baby birds and helps biologists keep track of the birds and determine their gender.

Want to learn more about green practices? Over the past decade JOE has placed more than 170,000 acres into conservation forever. That's just a small part of the story, beyond green.