For the past 20 years, West Virginia’s woodcock population has been on a steady downward trend. A new conservation effort to inventory available woodcock habitat was completed, with support from Wildlife Forever. “I believe that within a relatively short time this species will become alarmingly low in numbers,” said David Samuel of West Virginia University, who was the principal investigator of the study. Wildlife Forever funds were used to take aerial photographs of woodcock habitat to be compared with a 1970s inventory.