Southern Company - Corporate Responsibility Report: Wildlife

Collaborative Partnerships: Wildlife

A catch-and-relocate program helps the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker reproduce and increase its population.

Partnerships and Participation

Southern Company participates in many environmental stewardship programs to protect wildlife and conserve natural resources. These partnerships foster environmental improvements to ensure that the Southeast continues to be a healthy and desirable place to live. Partnerships include funding, but Southern Company employees will also roll up their sleeves to pitch in.

Power of Flight

The Power of Flight program is a partnership between Southern Company—including its four operating companies—and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The partnership funds efforts to conserve birds characteristic of the southern U.S. through strategic habitat restoration and environmental education. Efforts span Southern Company's primary service area of Georgia, Alabama, northwestern Florida and southeastern Mississippi.

Launched in 2003, the 11-year partnership is the largest public agency-private corporation funding effort for bird conservation in the South. Each partner contributes $300,000 annually with the combined $600,000 available through a competitive grant program. Grantees match all awards dollar for dollar (or more). In addition, Southern Company provides $60,000 annually to support the NFWF bird conservation efforts.

Fact Sheet (PDF 157KB) | More about NFWF | How to apply

Funding Priorities

The goal of the Power of Flight Program is to address the conservation needs of high priority bird species characteristic of the southern United States, such as Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Northern Bobwhite, coastal water birds and other imperiled species. Grants are awarded to support this goal and the following objectives:

Advance implementation of the following conservation management plans and prioritization schemes:

Federal species recovery plans
NFWF's American Oystercatcher Initiative
National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (View Map)
East Gulf Coastal Plain Joint Venture Open Pine Decision Support Tool (View Map - note: GA priorities will be added once completed)
Significant Landscapes" identified in the America's Longleaf Conservation Plan (View Map)

Support the management of targeted bird species in order to enhance populations and the habitat on which they rely
Accomplish on-the-ground habitat restoration projects that directly support targeted bird species
Engage the public in education, monitoring and management activities that promote awareness about the importance of protecting and recovering priority bird species
Strengthen our scientific understanding of priority species to enhance management decisions by practitioners and policy makers

Projects meeting the above criteria and implementing the following conservation actions will be considered:

Implement programs and activities that support species management
Restore and manage natural habitats to support target species
Conduct critical research identified as priority needs in the above-listed plans that will directly inform species management decisions by on-the-ground practitioners.
Support education and outreach activities that advance priority species goals; proposed activities should be highly collaborative, address strategic species conservation needs, be broadly applicable/easily transferable, and be clearly and demonstrably linked to specific conservation outcomes
Develop nature tourism programs that support targeted species and related conservation goals

*Research-related proposals must demonstrate coordination with key organizations, academic institutions and agencies performing similar or complementary work and describe how the results of the research will be used to enhance the work of on-the-ground practitioners and demonstrate relevant agencies' intent to utilize any management recommendations from the research.

Accomplishments

Awarded 71 grants to 35 different conservation organizations and agencies
Granted more than $6 million; with matching funds, total on-the-ground impact of more than $18.3 million
More than 404,000 acres have restored or enhanced*
Disseminated conservation education messages to more than 1.5 million people*

*Figures are approximate and include completed and anticipated results, estimated for funded projects cumulatively through 2010. Education messages include displays and materials placed in nature centers and other facilities that received more than 1 million visitors annually.

Grant Recipients: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003

Whooping Cranes

In a new alliance that extends efforts to restore bird populations in the Southeast, Southern Company is sponsoring Operation Migration USA with a Power of Flight grant. The support will help Operation Migration increase the number of whooping cranes it raises and leads south by ultralight aircraft from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin to the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.

The cranes are first taught to follow a specially designed ultralight aircraft. Eventually, they follow a team of four ultralight aircraft on their first migration from Wisconsin to Florida. Once the birds learn the migratory route they can return, on their own, the following spring. Each year a new generation is taught this route and released. Once this flock reaches 125 birds, including 25 breeding pairs, it can be considered self-sustaining.

Primarily due to destruction of natural habitat, only 15 birds survived in the world in the 1940s. Thanks to conservation efforts like Operation Migration, more than 500 whooping cranes survive today.

Official Operation Migration Site