Wood storks are nesting again at the National Audubon Society’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Collier County for the first time since 2014. That is the same year federal officials downgraded the wading birds’ protection status.
Sanctuary Manager Jason Lauritsen says he is “thrilled” by the findings given the lack of nesting activity in recent years. “Wood storks used to nest every year at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary nearly without exception,” said Lauritsen.
“It was in 2006 when we had the first two years in a row when storks did not nest and they went a period of seven years only nesting once in that span. They haven’t nested in the last two years as well, so you’re looking at two nesting events in the last ten years which is a really sharp decline from their heyday.”
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is historically the wood storks’ most significant rookery in North America. Back in the early 1960s, Lauritsen says the area’s shallow wetland habitat supported as many as 6,000 wood stork nests producing some 17,000 fledged birds in a season.
Researchers on a flight monitoring crew counted about 70 wood stork nests dotting the sanctuary’s bald cypress trees as of Jan. 9, and Lauritsen expects that number will increase in the coming weeks.
“Storks are what you would call an asynchronous nester,” said Lauritsen. “They don’t all commit at the same time. If you look at a snapshot in the middle of the nesting season, you may have birds that are sitting on eggs and other ones that are fledging. So you are looking at a long period of a month and a half to two months even, when birds are coming into the colony and making that decision to nest.”
Increased nesting in coastal Georgia and South Carolina prompted federal officials to downgrade the bird’s protection status from ‘endangered’ to ‘threatened’ two years ago.
Lauritsen opposed the downgrade at the time. He says he is still concerned about the future of the wood stork population, especially given the lack of data on how many fledged chicks actually survive to reach breeding age themselves. “The last values that I heard were we had 99 fledging birds tagged with satellite tags or radio collars. Only one of the 99 made it to adult breeding age,” said Lauritsen.
“So, that’s a pretty poor recruitment effort. I don’t know if that’s representative or if the equipment being placed on those birds had an influence or if battery failures were exceptionally high for some of those devices and they just stopped signaling. At the end of the day, we still lack that important piece of information.”
Another concern for wood storks is public perception. When foraging conditions in their natural habitat are unfavorable, the birds become more visible, feeding from roadside canals or man-made lakes. “Some people even might draw the conclusion that these are good places for these birds to be, so what’s the fuss about loss of wetlands if they can survive on a golf course lake?” said Lauritsen.
“The reality, though, is those birds that are feeding in a deep unnatural waterway are likely not nesting birds.”
