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chicks may "fledge" -- or fly for the first time -- within about three weeks but would remain dependent on their parents weeks longer and be especially vulnerable to predators.
• "It will just be a little island of habitat so that maybe the birds survive for a week or so," she said.
• Hanson said the additional 25 acres of habitat retained within a quarter mile -- approximately 400 meters -- is too far away for a bird that historically won't travel more than 150 meters at a time in unsheltered forest for fear of becoming someone else's dinner.

• Hanson said the Forest Service took the same approach -- unsuccessfully -- with a post-fire logging project in the neighboring El Dorado National Forest, leaving uncut three 40- to 50-acre patches of black-backed woodpecker habitat after the 2004 Freds fire near Kyburz, Calif.
• "They tested this exact theory before and it didn't work," he said. "No one has been able to find

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