Matt Pardue – Kisatchie National Forest after Hurricane Laura 03

Matt Pardue – Kisatchie National Forest
Matt Pardue was instrumental in sustaining and recovering the red cockaded woodpecker population on the Vernon unit of the Calcasieu Ranger District after two devastating hurricanes in 2020. Without Matt's leadership, the population would have severely declined.
On August 27, 2020 hurricane Laura hit southwestern Louisiana and as it traveled northwards it devastated the Vernon unit of the Calcasieu Ranger District. Although the rest of Kisatchie National Forest was significantly damaged by Laura nothing compared to the devastation that happened on the Vernon.
Out of the 86,000 acres on the Vernon every acre received damage and we had approximately 20,000 acres completely flattened. Out of the 249 red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW) clusters 224 had at least one tree down and several clusters had no RCW trees left standing. All total, we had 851 RCW trees down or broken off and many more RCW trees severely leaning and unusable.
Soon after Laura passed Matt Pardue, the wildlife biologist on the Vernon, started working on trying to save his RCW population. Matt spent many days out in the August heat leading an extraordinary effort by many folks to open roads into clusters, assess damage and start recovering and saving the population. We had District personnel, folks from other Districts and other Forests, as well as Fort Polk employees helping in this effort.
Matt was the first to arrive and the last to leave every day. He had to manage with no electricity and therefore no GIS, no computers or printers, no emails, no air conditioning, etc. Although he had received damage to his home and property, he did not take any time off until all RCW clusters had 4 usable cavities/inserts.
Then, on October 9, 2020 hurricane Delta hit and travel nearly the same path as Laura. Although not as bad as Laura the Vernon still received significant damage. 32 more RCW trees were blown down (some being brand new insert trees put in after Laura) and even more work was put on Matt and our employees.
Again, Matt lead the charge in saving the Vernon RCW population. As a result of Matt's leadership in natural resource management our Vernon RCW population is doing very well. Through Matt's and others quick response and hard work the birds readily moved into the new cluster trees and even into newly established clusters.
Even with almost 900 RCW trees being destroyed by hurricanes Laura and Delta and having to put in approximately 450 new RCW inserts and associated cluster rehab work the Vernon population was saved. Before the hurricanes the Vernon unit was home to 180 active RCW clusters.

Now, almost a year later we still have 180 active RCW clusters!