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Wyoming and western South Dakota.
• It is the first federal petition to recognize the ecological significance and seek protection of post-fire habitat, an expert said.
• In addition to fire suppression, the groups contend post-fire salvage logging combined with commercial thinning of green forests is eliminating what little remains of the bird's habitat, mostly in national forests where it has no legal protection.
• "Intensely burned forest habitat not only has no legal protection, but standard practice on private and public lands is to actively eliminate it," the petition said. "When fire and insect outbreaks create excellent woodpecker habitat, salvage logging promptly destroys it."
• Chad Hanson, executive director the Earth Island's John Muir Project based in

Cedar Ridge, Calif., filed the petition Wednesday with the Interior Department's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. Co-petitioners are the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Ariz., the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in Fossil, Ore., and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance in Laramie, Wyo.
• Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis, said the black-backed woodpecker has been eating beetles in fire-killed stands of

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