Tennessee’s wildlife and environmental agencies plan to bring back a species no longer found in the state: the red-cockaded woodpecker.

The little bird looks similar to downy and hairy woodpeckers but has a unique behavior: It excavates its nest holes in live trees, not dead ones. The red-cockaded woodpecker is considered threatened in the U.S. and has not been spotted in Tennessee since 1994.

“These types of things don’t come around too often in somebody’s career,” Josh Campbell, chief of biodiversity at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, or TWRA, said during a press conference announcing the recovery plan for the bird on Wednesday.

He suggested the red-cockaded woodpecker was widespread about 300 years ago when Tennessee looked different.

“We had open woodlands, we had open for

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