After decades-long comeback for the 4-foot-tall wood stork, federal protections may soon end

Wood storks were once confined to remote reaches of the Everglades. Now they nest across the Southeast.

Some birds are known for their exotic beauty, brilliant colors or melodious songs. The gangly wood stork, with its long legs and bald head, is none of those.

However, the bird has crafted its own comeback story. Once confined to remote reaches of the Everglades, where decades of ditching and draining left the storks and other wading birds in big trouble, storks now nest across the Southeast coastal plain.

As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed this month removing wood storks from the nation’s list of threatened and endangered species.

It's great to see the recovery of wood storks, said Nick Wiley, chief operating officer for Ducks Unlimited. "It's a big success when a species can come off the list. This is what happens when we restore and protect wetlands."

What is the Endangered Species Act?

Like the bald eagle, wood storks should be considered a success for the federal Endangered Species Act, which turns 50 this year, Wiley said.

Adopted under President Richard Nixon's administration in 1973, the act was intended to provide a way to protect and preserve ecosystems and a program to conserve and restore threatened and endangered species.

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What is a wood stork?

Once you see a wood stork, they’re hard to forget.

The birds nest in the tops of cypress trees, perched over wetlands and swamps where lurking alligators below help keep predators at bay.
They stand 50 inches tall with a 60- to 65-inch wingspan.
A pair of two chicks gobble an estimated 440 pounds of fish delivered by their parents over the 50 - 55 days from the time they hatch until they leave the nest.
Unlike their parents, the scruffy, fluffy chicks have pink and yellow beaks and make a raucous noise while their silent parents stand watch.
Within two years, beaks of the fledged storks turn black and the feathers on their heads disappear.

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Wetland restoration efforts help rebuild wood stork population

The nation's only breeding population of wood storks was placed on the endangered species list in February 1984, after their numbers declined by more than 75% over 50 years.

Biologists estimated 4,000 - 5,000 nesting pairs remained in fewer than 30 breeding colonies, and the storks rarely nested outside South Florida.

Today, half the population nests outside the region, said Bill Brooks, a recovery biologist with the wildlife service. More than 11,000 nesting pairs are found in more than 100 breeding colonies across the coastal plains of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

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Brooks also credits the recovery in part to wetland restoration efforts, such as a project undertaken by a farmer in Camilla, Georgia. The farmer approached the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service about restoring a cypress wetland on his property, Brooks said. A ditch was filled and “boom, the storks arrived."

Regular nesting in South Carolina was first documented in 1981. The state set a new record for nesting pairs in 2021, then topped that in 2022, counting 3,928 nests.

A breeding colony was spotted in North Carolina in 2005. Five colonies were found in 2019.

Some storks also migrate to Alabama and Mississippi after their annual breeding season, while wood storks from Central and South America migrate seasonally across the border.

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Are there still concerns?

Proposals to remove species from the endangered list are often greeted with concern and fear that without the extra protection the animal could end up where it was before – or worse. From the beginning, the act required goals to be set for when an animal or plant could be considered “recovered.”

Wood storks were upgraded from endangered to threatened in June 2014.

One criteria set to remove them from the list entirely was a five-year average of 10,000 nesting pairs, about half the historical population. That goal has been met.

Even though storks meet the recovery goal in three of their four breeding regions, they do not on their historic turf — South Florida and the Everglades.

The biggest criteria for nesting success for the storks is water level. Getting water levels right has been an ongoing challenge for decades in the Everglades, where a multi-billion restoration is underway.

Audubon Florida stated this week that South Florida's storks still experience fluctuations in nesting pairs depending on water levels, and climate change could bring even greater challenges for all the storks.

"While we celebrate many delistings," the organization stated, "we have grave concerns for the future of the wood stork, especially if it is left without the protections afforded under the Endangered Species Act."

The delisting should serve as a reminder that many species remain imperiled because of wetland losses, said Wiley, a former director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "There's more work to do."

The nation still loses tens of thousands of acres of wetlands a year.

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