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Flying North to Fly SouthExplore more photos from the story |
It's already been a long journey for a flock of juvenile whooping cranes in central Wisconsin—and the real trip hasn't yet begun.
Bred in captivity at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, in Laurel, Maryland, the 17 cranes are undergoing their final days of intensive flight training at Wisconsin's Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. In October, the birds will set off on a 1,200-mile voyage to Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in northwest Florida. This annual migration is part of a pioneering program to bring these majestic birds back from the brink of extinction to where they can migrate and breed without human intervention.
Leading the cranes south will not be a dominant bird but a microlight aircraft and its pilot, a person dressed to resemble a crane in a white poncho and hood, who has become as much a caregiver to these birds as the biological parent they would have had in the wild. Unlike other species of waterfowl that breed in the wild, the captive-bred cranes have no parents from which to learn their migratory habits. So each year a group of young cranes is trained to fly with microlights in order to teach them the imprint of the migration route. After their inaugural microlight-led migration, the cranes will then join other birds in the eastern flock for the return leg north, as well as for later migrations.
The ultimate goal is to create a self-sustainable Atlantic Coast flock of no fewer than 125 whooping cranes, with at least five breeding pairs. Today, this flock numbers around 60 birds. Compared with a 1940s low of only 15 whooping cranes in all of North America, today's incremental growth represents a miraculous recovery. Back then, the species had been devastated by habitat loss, overhunting, drought and disease. In 1967, the species was listed as endangered. As of this past April, there were 485 whooping cranes living in North America; 340 in the wild, and 145 spread between several non-migratory and captive populations.
Conservation experts believe there must be at least three separate self-sustaining flocks in order for the species to thrive. Besides the eastern migratory flock, a bigger self-sustaining flock of more than 200 cranes migrates naturally from Wood Buffalo National Park in northwestern Canada to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Another non-migratory flock of almost 60 birds loafs year-round at Kissimmee Prairie in Florida.
Officials have stopped releasing birds into the non-migratory Kissimmee pool, which suffers from disease, drought, habitat loss and genetic complications from interbreeding. But discussions are also underway to establish a third migratory flock, perhaps within the Louisiana wetlands, to build off the success of the microlight-led migration program.
All but a handful of the eastern flock were reintroduced to the wild through the efforts of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP), a collaboration between nine non-profit and government organizations including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the International Crane Foundation and Operation Migration—the outfit that trains and escorts the birds from Necedah.
Each year, eggs from a captive-bred population are hatched at the U.S. Geological Survey's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland. The first thing these newborns see is a hand-puppet resembling the head of an adult crane, which is wielded by a costumed technician. The chicks learn to feed from the adult and follow it around circular exercise pens. A similar process is used to familiarize the chicks with the microlight aircraft that they will fly with on the migration. This training continues from the first daily feedings to the final days before takeoff at Necedah. All told, the cranes likely won't see a human out of costume until they migrate from Wisconsin.
Comments
I just seen hundreds of birds fly north when they should be flying south at this time. They just flew south at 9:35pm October 26, 2009. Making lots of noise. Whats going on?
Posted by on October 26,2009 | 10:44 PM