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conifer forests for millions of years and specifically in North American forests for "many thousand years -- since the last Ice Age."
• "Now, it's very rare," he said.
• The best science suggests there are fewer than 1,000 pairs in Oregon and California, and fewer than 500 pairs in the Black Hills, the petition said.
• "Such small populations are at significant risk of extinction, especially when their habitat is mostly unprotected and is currently under threat of destruction and degradation," the document said.
• The three-toed, black-backed woodpecker is a specialist at digging out wood-boring insect larvae. The bird's sooty black dorsal plumage serves to camouflage it against the deeply black, charred bark of burned trees.
• Richard Hutto, a biology professor and director of the Avian Science Center at

the University of Montana, has been doing post-fire research since the early 1990s. He said it would be difficult to find a forest-bird species more restricted to a single vegetation cover type than the black-backed woodpecker is to early post-fire conditions.
• Hanson believes the federal petition is the first to seek protection of post-fire habitat and recognize it as "distinct and ecologically significant."
• "While it may come as a surprise to some, burned forests, and the dead trees

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