Whooping Crane - Conservation Efforts

Conservation Efforts

The Whooping Crane was declared endangered in 1967. Although believed to be naturally rare, the crane has suffered major population deprivations due to habitat destruction and over-hunting. The population has gone to an estimated 10,000+ birds before the settling of Europeans on the continent to 1,300-1,400 birds by 1870 to 15 adults by 1938. The current population is approximately 382.

During the past two years, five Whooping Cranes in the Eastern population, which numbers about 100 in total, have been illegally shot and killed. One of the dead cranes was the female ("First Mom") who was the first captive raised and released whooper to successfully raise, along with her mate, a chick to adulthood in the wild in the East, in 2006. This was a particular blow to that population because whoopers in the East do not yet have an established successful breeding situation. Various agencies and individuals have offered rewards for the apprehension of the persons responsible.

Although the individuals responsible for the deaths of four of the cranes have not yet been apprehended, on March 30, 2011, Wade Bennett, 18, of Cayuga, Indiana and an unnamed juvenile pled guilty to killing First Mom. After killing the crane, the juvenile had posed holding up its body. Bennett and the juvenile were sentenced to a $1 fine, probation, and court fees of about $500, a penalty which was denounced by various conservation organizations as being too light. The prosecuting attorney has estimated that the cost of raising and introducing to the wild one Whooping Crane could be as much as $100,000.

In October 2011, two juveniles were apprehended for shooting to death two of the first ten Whooping Cranes in an experimental Jefferson Davis parish, Louisiana, non-migratory population.

On the other hand, attempts have been made to establish other breeding populations in captivity.

• One project by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service was initiated in 1975 involved cross-fostering with Sandhill Cranes to establish a second self-sustaining flock. Although 85 chicks from the 289 Whooping Crane eggs transplanted into Sandhill Crane nests learned to migrate, the Whooping Cranes failed to mate with other Whooping Cranes due to imprinting on their Sandhill foster parents; the project was discontinued in 1989. No members of this population survive. This effort and the problem of imprinting is explored in the 1976 documentary A Great White Bird.
• A second involved the establishment of a non-migratory population near Kissimmee, Florida by a cooperative effort led by the U.S. and Canadian Whooping Crane Recovery Team in 1993. As of December 18, 2006, this population numbered about 53 birds, but a decision was made not to introduce further birds into this population until problems with high mortality and lack of reproduction are resolved, and as of May 2011, the population had shrunk to 20 cranes.
• A third attempt has involved reintroducing the Whooping Crane to a new flyway established east of the Mississippi river. This project uses isolation rearing of young Whooping Cranes and trains them to follow ultralight aircraft, a method of re-establishing migration routes pioneered by Bill Lishman and Joe Duff when they led Canada Geese in migration from Ontario, Canada, to Virginia and South Carolina in 1993. The non-profit organization which is responsible for the ultralight migrations is Operation Migration, and the larger group, WCEP (the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership), oversees all aspects of the Eastern Introduced Flock. They are now also releasing fledged cranes directly into the established population, to learn the migratory behavior from their peers (Direct Autumn Release). One Whooping Crane from the Eastern Migratory Population (EMP) has been the recipient of special attention from conservationists for several years. This crane was given the name "Number 16-05" because he was the sixteenth Whooping Crane to be tracked and tagged in 2005. That year, #16-05 collided with an ultralight plane, and because of an injury resulting from this collision, he missed the autumn portion of that year's northern migration. He also had difficulty flying during his juvenile winter, however, he exhibited no flying impairment during the spring migration.

Subsequent to hatching, the Operation Migration cranes are taught to follow their ultralight aircraft, fledged over their future breeding territory in Wisconsin, and led by ultralight on their first migration from Wisconsin to Florida; the birds learn the migratory route and then return, on their own, the following spring. This reintroduction began in fall 2001 and has added birds to the population in each subsequent year (Except that in early 2007, a disastrous storm killed all of the 2006 yearlings after their arrival in Florida.).

As of May, 2011, there were 105 surviving Whooping Cranes in the Eastern Migratory Population (EMP), including seventeen that had formed pairs, several of which are nesting and are incubating eggs. Two Whooping Crane chicks were hatched from one nest, on June 22, 2006. Their parents are both birds that were hatched and led by ultralight on their first migration in 2002. The chicks are the first Whooping Cranes hatched in the wild, of migrating parents, east of the Mississippi, in over 100 years. One of these young chicks was unfortunately predated on the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. The other young chick, a female, has successfully migrated with her parents to Florida. As noted above, in early February, 2007, 17 yearlings in a group of 18 were killed by the 2007 Central Florida tornadoes. All birds in that flock were believed to have died in the storms, but then a signal from one of the transmitters, "Number 15-06", indicated that it had survived. The bird was subsequently relocated in the company of some Sandhill Cranes. It died in late April from an as yet unknown cause, possibly related to the storm trauma. Two of the 4 DAR Whooper chicks from 2006 were also lost due to predation. However, as of December, 2010, 105 birds had become established in the eastern United States population.

• Due to the vulnerability of the Florida non-migratory population, an attempt is being made to establish a second non-migratory population in Louisiana's White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area. In March 2011, 10 cranes were released, but all but three had been lost by the time a second group of 16 were released in December. This is a cooperative effort of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Geological Survey, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at LSU, and the International Crane Foundation.

In Wood Buffalo National Park, the Canadian Wildlife Service counted 73 mating pairs in 2007. They produced 80 chicks, of which 40 survived to the fall migration, and 39 completed the migration to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. In May 2011, there were 78 mating pairs and 279 total birds.