Wood Stork

From Florida Today

By Jim Waymer

The wood stork may soon lift from "endangered" to "threatened," reflecting an expanded range for the nation's only breeding stork and largest wading bird.

Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would consider the less-serious designation of "threatened" for the bird.

"It wouldn't make it easier or harder to get permits. It wouldn't roll back any protections currently in place," said Chuck Underwood, a spokesman for U.S. Fish and Wildlife. "Even if we would reclassify. there would be no changes in how we do business, it just reflects the biological status."

The agency must first complete a yearlong review of the species.

The decision to consider the change comes as a result of a petition last year by the Pacific Legal Foundation and Biological Research Associates, on behalf of their client the Florida Home Builders Association.

The service listed the wood stork as endangered in 1984. They did a five-year review of its status in 1991. After more than 15 years without another five-year review, a federal court ordered one after an homebuilders association lawsuit in 2007 forced the service to review the bird's status and that of almost 100 other species.

Wood storks mostly frequent the Everglades.

The service says their downlisting may be in order, however, because the bird's breeding population has now expanded from Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to parts of Mississippi and North Carolina.

There used to be plenty of wood storks nesting at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge two decades ago, said Dorn Whitmore, a ranger at the refuge.

But the storks never really snapped back after a strong freeze killed off their three major mangrove rookeries on the refuge.

Rangers put out decoy storks and nesting platforms, to no avail.

"After that freeze, they quit nesting," Whitmore said.

Contact Waymer at 242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com.