page_title: Woodpecker
section_title: Status and conservation
hierarchical_section_title: Woodpecker / Relationship with humans / Status and conservation
caption_attribution_description: English: Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis on Water Oak, Quercus phellos. Hand-colored engraving. Original caption (cropped off here) reads: Picus Maximus rostro albo: The largest white-bill Wood-pecker; Quercus, an potius Ilex Marilandica folio longo angusto Salicis. Ray Hist: The Willow-Oak
context_page_description: Woodpeckers are part of the family Picidae, that also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. Most species live in forests or woodland habitats, although a few species are known that live in treeless areas, such as rocky hillsides and deserts, and the Gila woodpecker specialises in exploiting cacti.
  Members of this family are chiefly known for their characteristic behaviour. They mostly forage for insect prey on the trunks and branches of trees, and often communicate by drumming with their beak, producing a reverberatory sound that can be heard at some distance. Some species vary their diet with fruits, birds' eggs, small animals, and tree sap, human scraps, and carrion. They mostly nest and roost in holes that they excavate in tree trunks, and their abandoned holes are of importance to other cavity-nesting birds. They sometimes come into conflict with humans when they make holes in buildings or feed on fruit crops, but perform a useful service by their removal of insect pests on trees.
context_section_description: In a global survey of the risk of extinction faced by the various bird families, woodpeckers were the only bird family to have significantly fewer species at risk than would be expected. 
  Nevertheless, several woodpeckers are under threat as their habitats are destroyed. Being woodland birds, deforestation and clearance of land for agriculture and other purposes can reduce populations dramatically. Some species adapt to living in plantations and secondary growth, or to open countryside with forest remnants and scattered trees, but some do not. A few species have even flourished when they have adapted to man-made habitats. There are few conservation projects directed primarily at woodpeckers, but they benefit whenever their habitat is conserved. The red-cockaded woodpecker has been the focus of much conservation effort in the southeastern United States, with artificial cavities being constructed in the longleaf pines they favour as nesting sites.
  Two species of woodpeckers in the Americas, the ivory-billed woodpecker and the imperial woodpecker are classified as critically endangered, with some authorities believing them extinct, though there have been possible but disputed ongoing sightings of ivory-billed woodpeckers in the United States and a small population may survive in Cuba. Another critically endangered species is the Okinawa woodpecker from Japan, with a single declining population of a few hundred birds. It is threatened by deforestation, golf course, dam and helipad construction, road building and agricultural development.
caption: The ivory-billed woodpecker is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN,[51] and some authorities believe it may already be extinct.
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