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Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
<><><>Graduate School: it's not just a job, it's an indenture!<><><>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 08:23:25 -0700
Subject: Endangered Crane Migration Underway

>
> By Emily Hoffman,
> Discovery.com News
>
> April 4, 2000 -- Narrowly avoiding a turf war for nesting ground, a
> slow-growing flock of endangered whooping cranes this week begins its
> spring migration.
>
> Each spring, traveling as family units, cranes make a hazardous,
> 2000-mile migration from Aransas, Texas, to Wood Buffalo National Park
> in Canada's Northwest Territories. There, they breed before returning
> south in the autumn.
>
> Late in February, biologists feared the whooping cranes might contract
> avian cholera during one of their stops, in Nebraska. A drought shrank
> the nesting ground, also a stopover for many ducks. The problem was
> averted when ducks and other waterfowl unexpectedly left three weeks
> earlier than normal.
>
> But other hazards await the cranes.
>
> "The biggest predator on whooping cranes in both the spring and fall
> migration is power lines," says Paul Tebbel, biologist and manager of
> the National Audubon Society's Rowe Sanctuary. "They hit those huge
> transmission lines while, possibly, trying to land in an area. That's
> where more die than any other place."
>
> And whooping cranes can't afford to lose any of their numbers, since
> population growth has been slow the last couple of years.
>
> "They've had some rough times," says Tebbel.
>
> There are about 185 wild whooping cranes worldwide, according to the
> U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
>
> Hunting, disease, loss of habitat and settlers cut whooping cranes
> from 1,400 in 1865 to around 15 in 1941, according to the
> International Crane Foundation. The birds have been on the Endangered
> Species List for over 30 years.
>
> According to Tebbel, a disaster, natural or otherwise, could wipe out
> many cranes at once.
>
> "Right now, we have all of the whooping cranes basically moving
> between two spaces, Wood Buffalo and Aransas. So often they're all
> together in one place ...," says Tebbel. "We're trying to do anything
> we can do get another population started that's geographically
> separate from the current population."
>
> "The overall recovery goal for the species is to augment [the current
> migratory flock] and have separate flocks with at least 25 breeding
> pairs," says Jim Harris, deputy director of the International Crane
> Foundation.
>
> Next year, biologists aim to begin establishing a migratory flock that
> will move between a breeding ground in Wisconsin and a wintering
> ground on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
>
> A non-migratory flock of about 70 whooping cranes in Florida
> constitutes about half of the total non-migratory flock worldwide,
> according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
>
>
>