{"id":509923,"date":"2026-03-07T20:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/509923\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T20:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:59:12","slug":"sc-wood-stork-efforts-contribute-to-federal-ending-of-decades-long-endangered-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/509923\/","title":{"rendered":"SC Wood Stork efforts contribute to federal ending of decades-long endangered status"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WPDE \u2014 A rare wading bird is making a major comeback across the Southeast, prompting federal officials to remove it from the endangered species list.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the Southeast population of the wood stork will be removed from the federal endangered species list starting March 9.<\/p>\n<p>MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/wpde.com\/news\/local\/north-carolina-governor-josh-stein-hazard-mitigation-disaster-relief-volunteer-organizations-grant-funding-flood-transportation-infrastructure-engineering-community-storms-restoration-western-north-carolina-relief\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Gov. Stein announces over $40M in mitigation and volunteer organization grants<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wood storks were first listed as endangered in 1984 after habitat loss and changes to water flow caused their numbers to plummet to about 4,000 to 5,000 nesting pairs. <\/p>\n<p>After decades of conservation work and wetland restoration, the population has rebounded to an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 nesting pairs across the Southeast.<\/p>\n<p>In South Carolina, wildlife officials said private landowners have played a key role by managing wetlands that provide ideal nesting and feeding habitat for the birds. <\/p>\n<p>State surveys show wood stork nests in South Carolina have grown from just 11 nests in the 1980s to nearly 4,000 in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WPDE \u2014 A rare wading bird is making a major comeback across the Southeast, prompting federal officials to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-509923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}