| Pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) are associated with characteristics of older forest stages, such as larger diameter trees and the presence of snags used for roosting, nesting and foraging. However, pileated woodpeckers are also known to use managed forests. The Hoopa Valley Reservation (HVR) is approximately 37,000 ha of mostly forested area with an array of seral stages from old growth to recently cut stands. The Hoopa Tribe manages timber, and makes provisions for the persistence of woodpeckers. However, no formal study has assessed pileated woodpecker habitat on the HVR, and habitat has not been well described in this region. We caught and outfitted 11 pileated woodpeckers with 10g transmitter backpacks between April 2009 and May 2013. We examined habitat selection with Resource Utilization Functions, which give a weighted value of bird use for every GIS cell. We created a fixed kernel estimator and with the plug-in method as the smoothing parameter, and then applied multiple regression to fit a model to the habitat covariates. We found that birds selected late seral attributes within their home ranges. This study will help address the need to inform the Tribe's current practices with knowledge of habitat for pileated woodpeckers.
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