Federal money for Red-cockaded Woodpeckers

A private stewardship grant of more than $450,000 went to Milliken Forestry Company Inc. today. Milliken and more than 45 private landowners are working together in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Safe Harbor Agreement program to restore longleaf pine habitat on 17,645 acres in South Carolina and Georgia.

Red-cockaded Woodpecker has been on the federal endangered species list since late 1970. Its range is thought to include Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

The grant to Milliken and dozens of other federal grants--totaling more than $6.9 million--was announced by Matt Hogan, acting assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.

"The Private Stewardship Grants program helps conservationists build new partnerships and strengthen existing ones to benefit wildlife conservation," Hogan said. "This grant program is a Bush Administration initiative launched four years ago to empower citizens to conserve imperiled species on private lands across the nation. What the people at Milliken are accomplishing with the help of private landowners here is a testament to the benefit of that kind of empowerment."

To see a complete list of private stewardship grants awarded in 2006 throughout the states, click here.