History
The Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery (RhWR) was formed in December 2006 as a Special Committee of the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis (ACM) with a $400 grant from the National Audubon Society. The first newsletter was published in December 2006 and was included in the ACM newsletter as an enclosure. By April 2007 the RhWR membership was 55.
In 2008 the RhWR approved an agreement with Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (CCESR) to study Red-headed Woodpeckers (RHWO) at CCESR. Our first studies were to identify and record the locations of nest trees. In the summer of 2010 Professor Todd Arnold, University of Minnesota, funded a graduate student, Ari Waldstein, to study RHWOs at CCESR. With RhWR funding, a camera was purchased to photograph RHWOs in their nest, allowing Ari to get more information of nesting behavior, egg counts, and young data. Ari was the first at CCESR to capture a RHWO and band it with color coded bands. She called it “Eve”.
In the Summer of 2013 two teachers, Patrick Hartman and Alan Watchuka, were hired by the University of Minnesota to carry on the nest studies began by Ari Waldstein. A new camera was purchased by the RhWR to “peek” into their nests and gather data about RHWO nesting.
Brittney Larsen Yohannes began research at CCESR under the guidance of Professor Todd Arnold in 2014. Her research continued the studies begun by Ari Waldstein and greatly expanded our understanding of RHWO nesting behavior and factors influencing nesting success.
In 2017, Dr. Elena West joined our program from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. West has continued her work on RHWO nesting aided by funding equipment purchases and funding summer field technicians over 2018 – 2024. In 2019 Dr. West obtained a Legislative – Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) grant to study factors that would allow drafting Best Management Practices (BMP) to aid in the recovery of Red-headed Woodpeckers. The RhWR will be assisting to publicize them once published. In 2021 Dr. West received a grant from the LCCMR to use Bioacoustics to monitor the population of RHWOs in Minnesota. In 2022 she began a study of roosting sites of RHWO’s at CCESR and has continued nest monitoring studies with the help of the RhWR funding and volunteers. Dr. Elena West was appointed an Assistant Professor in 2022 and continues her studies of Red-headed Woodpeckers at CCESR and around Minnesota.
In May 2024 the Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery became an independent non-profit corporation and received IRS 501(c)(3) approval to allow acceptance of tax exempt donations in July 2024.
The history of the Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery (RhWR) is compiled below. It is divided into three different time periods. The first period is before 2012 and denotes the period mostly before the RhWR began studies (in 2008) at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (CCESR). The second period (2008 – 2016) is when RhWR began its research and partnered with researchers from the University of Minnesota. The final period (2017 – 2024) is when a principal researcher (Dr. Elena West) began working with the RhWR at CCESR.
Click below to view the three periods of history of the RhWR at CCESR. Some of the content are reprints from “The REDHEAD”.