Whooping Cranes have made a steady return from the
brink of extinction, but sea-level rise due to climate
change poses a serious coming threat
BY MATT MENDENHALLRic
har
d^ Seeley/Shut
terstoc
khis past February, I crossed two
related but distinct items off my
bucket list. I attended the
Whooping Crane Festival in
Port Aransas, Texas, an event I had
wanted to take part in for years. And I
saw truly wild Whooping Cranes for the
first time — four white adults and one
tawny-headed juvenile.
I’d bet a dollar that, if you’re a birder,
these experiences are on your bucket
list, too. The 23-year-old festival features
a great lineup of speakers, including
George Archibald of the International
Crane Foundation, excellent birding
tours, and a lively vendor area. And
when you live in Wisconsin, like I do, it’s
a no-brainer to want to spend a few days
in winter on the Texas coast.
Whether you have seen 30 species of
birds or 3,000, when you can add the
Whooping Crane to your life list, you
should savor the moment. Because, of
course, it’s not simply one more bird. It’s
a species that was driven up to the cliff
of extinction just eight decades ago,
when its population was in the low 20s
— including just four breeding females
— and has been pulled back from the
brink thanks to the dedication of
conservations, government biologists,
zoos, pilots, and many others.
It’s a species whose breeding
grounds, in the vast Wood Buffalo
National Park in far northern Canada,
were not discovered until 1954.
And it’s a species that has captured
the public’s imagination like few other
North American birds. Even without its
up-and-down recovery story, the
Whooper demands attention — it
stands nearly 5 feet tall (making it the
tallest bird in North America), is all
white with black primaries and a red
crown, and makes an unforgettable
ker-loo call over the marshes it inhabits.
Overall, the crane’s prospects have
been on the upswing in recent years,
especially as the Aransas-Wood
Buffalo population grew in 2018 to a
record 505 birds. But as I learned at the
festival, the future for Whooping
Cranes is cloudy at best.RECENT HISTORY
Before we look ahead, let’s review the
crane’s story.
Overhunting and habitat loss
reduced the crane’s numbers from an
estimated 10,000 before European
settlement of North America to about
1,300 by 1870. The trend continued into
the 1930s, when the Aransas-Wood
Buffalo f lock declined to just 15 birds. A
hurricane wiped out many birds from a
nearby Louisiana f lock, leaving only 21
wild and two captive cranes in the world
in 1941.Recovery was quite slow for the next
30 years, but public awareness of the
species grew as more people learned
about it. In 1967, the crane was one
of the original 75 species listed as
Endangered in the U.S., a status it
retains to this day.
In the 1970s and early ’80s, when the
species numbered fewer than 100 birds,
Archibald famously danced with a
captive female crane named Tex that
had imprinted on people, and she
eventually laid a viable egg. The story
produced an invitation for Archibald to
appear on “The Tonight Show” in June- Sadly, the night before Archibald
went on the show, Tex was killed when
raccoons got into her enclosure. He told
the news to a shocked Johnny Carson
and his vast audience.
Tex’s son, Gee Whiz, would go on to
sire many birds, including some that
have been released in Wisconsin and
Florida.
Over the decades, as captive
breeding populations were established
and the wild f lock that winters in
Texas and breeds at Wood Buffalo
grew, biologists wanted an insurance
policy. Or two. The small wild f lock
was (and still is) vulnerable to a
catastrophe, such as a hurricane or an
oil spill in the shipping channel next to
Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. So,
A cloudy
T
14 Bi rdWatch i ng • September/October 2019