Red Orbit News recently reported on a story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the struggles to restore the endangered whooping crane.

First, the good news:

A record six pairs of whooping cranes have been seen incubating eggs this month on Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, ground zero in the effort to reintroduce the rarest of all the world’s cranes.

But then the not-so-good news:

But after seven years and more than $10 million, the cranes continue to struggle. The project remains a work in progress with only one whooping crane born in the wild in the eastern United States since 2001…

The birds are slow to reach maturity, and the young adults might be struggling with parenthood.

There are also ecological questions. Among the issues researchers are sorting through is the quality of habitat in central Wisconsin, where first-year birds are led 1,250 miles by ultralight aircraft to their wintering grounds in Florida.

As this blog has reported, currently there are around 400 whooping cranes in North America with three separate wild populations:

• the original migratory western flock that winters in Aransas NWR on the Gulf Coast of Texas and summers in Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada
• an eastern flock that is being developed using captive birds at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. The young birds are transplanted to Wisconsin where they are taught to migrate, using an ultralight airplane. Once these birds are independent, they then become part of the eastern flock that migrates between Necedah NWR in Wisconsin to Chassahowitzka NWR in Florida each spring and fall
• a third, non-migratory flock of over 85 wild birds on the Kissimmee Prairie of central Florida

Hurricanes, low water supplies, disappearing wetlands, and a shallow gene pool all threaten the recovery efforts that aim to restore the tallest crane in North America to a healthy population. But there are other issues of concern. In addition to the fact that the birds don’t start laying eggs until they’re around five years old are the problematic episodes where adult whoopers have laid eggs only to abandon them almost immediately.

John Christian, another Fish and Wildlife Service official, urged patience.

“One of the hypotheses is that we are dealing with teenage parents,” said Christian, assistant regional director of migratory birds and state programs at Fort Snelling, Minn. “The birds need to reach full maturity.”

But with lackluster results to date, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, a group of public and private organizations managing the crane’s comeback, is looking for ways to improve its prospects.

One of the solutions may be to move the birds. Biologists have concerns about problems at the refuges used for the eastern flock, namely development, drought, and loss of wetlands. The Partnership is now talking about splitting up the eastern flock with some of them being led to Louisiana.

Also being questioned is the technique whereby humans at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland put on whooper costumes and act as parents to raise the chicks in captivity, thus giving the biologists more control. Some experts, like George Archibald, co-founder of the crane foundation and a leader in crane conservation, think adult whoopers should be allowed to raise the chicks.

Finally, there is the belief that not enough whoopers are being produced each year to allow for a lasting recovery. But more will be coming this year:

This year, the partnership hopes to release as many as 28 cranes at Necedah, according to Joan Garland, outreach coordinator for the crane foundation. Ten or 12 of them could be released directly — the most ever — to follow older whooping cranes or the sandhill cranes that older whoopers are likely to associate with…

In the end, the partnership hopes to build the population at Necedah to 125 birds, with birds breeding on their own.

Tags:
wildlife, wildlife refuge, whooping crane, Necedah NWR, Chassahowitzka NWR, Wisconsin, Florida