Magnificent Journey
Two stories follow the trail of the whooping crane's return to Minnesota.
With only about 320 individuals in the wild, the whooping crane (Grus americana) is one of North America's most endangered bird species. Never common across their former range, whooping cranes began disappearing after European settlers arrived. By 1942 just 15 were known to exist.
The sudden appearance of a lone whooping crane in a Minnesota refuge last spring is neither the beginning nor the end of this species' remarkable tale, as shown in the following two stories. In "Solo Sojourn," wildlife biologist Joan Galli tells about her close encounter with the returning "queen of the prairie." Then, in "Whooping Revival," Greg Breining reports on the slow but steady progress of conservation measures to revive the world's wild population.
Solo Sojourn
By Joan Galli
It was a dark and stormy night. No, not really. Thursday, May 22, 2003, actually began like any other day in the office, with too much work, too little time, too many telephone calls. Yes, it was raining. The day would have been too boring to even mention until the phone rang once again.
I answered and heard Bob Fashingbauer, assistant manager at Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area, say, "Hey, Joan, a woman from some national crane research group called. She tracked one of their whooping cranes to Pool 9 at the Avery last night."
I was momentarily stunned.
To jump-start a birder's other-wise mundane morning, there is nothing like being told that one of the rarest, most endangered birds on the continent is less than 20 miles away.
Bob was short on the details. "I called her back, but her cell phone was breaking up," he said. "I'm going out to meet her at Pool 9 in half an hour. Do you want to track the crane over the weekend if it stays around?"
By this time my brain had kicked into overdrive, and was racing through a series of thoughts and questions. "He must mean the International Crane Foundation. Could it be that one of the cranes from the reintroduction is back from Florida and here in Minnesota instead of at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin? Oh, wow! Yahoo! We're going to have whooping cranes back and nesting in Minnesota one of these days." The last recorded nesting of a whooping crane in Minnesota was in Grant County in 1876.
I declined the tracking assignment, thinking about all the other work to be done. As I hung up the phone, it struck me: "Jeez, girl, you just passed on the opportunity of a lifetime to participate in what you think is one of the greatest ornithological adventures to span three centuries. You've always been intrigued by the struggle to save the whooping crane from extinction. You just blew it big time!" I realized my venture into ornithological history might yet be redeemed if I could at least go see the bird before day's end. I was glad to know that the crane foundation people expected the day's rainy weather would keep the bird grounded.
Mindful of Bob's words that ICF staff wanted the crane sighting kept quiet while the bird was still around, I reported the news only to my colleagues in the Department of Natural Resources Nongame Wildlife Program. My colleague Steve Kittelson and I conspired to meet after our morning commitments and go see that bird.
By 1:15 we were on our way to see the crane, we hoped. Because no further word had reached us, the suspense mounted when we left the forest and turned west along the sandy dike road of Carlos Avery WMA. Would the crane still be there?
The rain had stopped briefly, leaving a light mist hanging over the wetlands. Suddenly, far off, we saw a big, white bird. Outstanding against a dark and stormy sky, it lured us down the road for a closer view.
We rounded a curve. Oh, no! There was a maroon minivan in our path. The back hatch was up, serving as a roof to shelter some birder with a spotting scope from the rain. His scope pointed toward the crane. As we pulled closer, we recognized, with great pleasure, a friend-Bill Longley, retired DNR wildlife biologist. My day was saved: I was seeing the whooping crane and sharing the adventure with friends.
Together we turned our attention to the big bird. It stood taller by half a foot than the 40 sandhill cranes milling around in the meadow. The tallest bird in North America, a whooping crane stands about 5 feet tall with upstretched neck.
Arrayed in the white plumage of an adult bird, "our" crane was bright and stood out against the rich green, rain-washed grasses and the gray-plumaged sandhill cranes, which blended into the cloudy skyline. This bird was beautiful and also bossy! As we watched, the whooping crane periodically interrupted its foraging to stalk after, jab at, and otherwise harass the surrounding sandhill cranes. We estimated the wading bird to be a third of a mile away on a marsh. Through the scope, we could see a green band on one leg and a transmitter on the other.
An hour later, we reluctantly took our leave.
Back at the office, we searched the Web site of Operation Migration to learn more about the bird. We discovered that the bird was female Number 021, captive-bred, hatched April 12, 2002, from the flock at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. She had subsequently been sent, along with 15 other whooping crane youngsters, to Necedah NWR in Wisconsin to take part in a great experiment to re-establish a wild population of migratory whooping cranes in the eastern United States. This multiyear, multimillion-dollar effort is being conducted by a coalition of state and federal agencies and private nonprofit groups known as the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership.
During the summer of 2002, bird Number 021 had been "in training" at Necedah, learning to follow an ultralight aircraft. In the fall of 2002, the airplane led the "Class of '02" more than 1,200 miles south on a 49-day migration to Chassahowitzka NWR on Florida's Gulf Coast.
We learned from her Internet biography that Number 021 had a bit of a rough journey south. She dropped out of the third leg after sustaining a minor injury when she clipped a bare tree branch on takeoff. After receiving stitches, she rejoined the flock the same day and ultimately made it to Florida for the winter.
During the first two weeks of April 2003, bird Number 021 and her cohort returned to Wisconsin. The details of this unassisted journey north can be found on the Web sites of the International Crane Foundation and Operation Migration (see Online, below). Apparently, Number 021 likes to travel: After pausing briefly in Wisconsin, she flew to Minnesota, where we encountered her. Her first visit to Minnesota lasted only one day. In late June she returned and spent the summer near Owatonna and Rice Lake State Park. By mid-September she had flown back to western Wisconsin before making a successful fall migration to her Florida wintering grounds.
As fantastic as Number 021's tale of travels has been to date, the most extraordinary coincidence was revealed a few days after her first appearance in Minnesota. While reading with great sadness about the death, at age 100, of Walter Breckenridge, one of Minnesota's most esteemed and beloved ornithologists, it struck me that the day Number 021 had appeared was the day Breck's life had ended.
It seems that even as Breckenridge's death marked the end of an era in Minnesota ornithological history, Number 021 inaugurated a new era for Minnesota birds and birders. The whooping crane was back-with the potential to once again breed in our state.
Breck would have loved such a coincidence, I am sure. He would have been the first to use her appearance to remind us that saving wetlands and wildlife habitat is the responsibility of all Minnesotans-it is our natural heritage and our legacy to future citizens.
In my mind, Number 021 is now, and always will be, "Breck's bird." She symbolizes hope for the restoration of a magnificent bird species to our beleaguered wetlands and marshes. Keep watching. You too may soon see a whooping crane in a Minnesota marsh near you.
Joan Galli is a DNR nongame wildlife specialist in St. Paul.
Whooping Revival
By Greg Breining
A young female whooping crane appeared briefly last May in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area north of St. Paul and returned again for several weeks during the summer before flying back to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin.
Minnesota birders and conservationists were thrilled. The product of a well-publicized effort to restore the endangered whooping crane to the eastern United States, she was the first reintroduced crane reported in the state.
Most likely, Minnesotans won't have to wait long to spot another of these majestic birds. As restoration continues, multiplying whooping cranes may continue to stray west-ward and within a few years begin to breed in Minnesota for the first time since 1876.
"I think it's just a matter of time before we get more of those birds wandering across the boundary and using the habitat here," said Carrol Henderson, supervisor of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Nongame Wildlife Program. "Necedah to Minnesota is just a short flight."
It should be worth the wait. The whooping crane is a spectacle of the avian world. Five feet tall, with white plumage and red topknot, it is North America's tallest bird. Its weird whoop, generated in a 5-foot-long trachea looped within the keel of its breastbone, signals danger, declares territory, and reinforces the bond between mates.
Whooping cranes once ranged from central Canada to Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Rockies. Journals of explorers and settlers record whooping cranes in 35 U.S. states, six Canadian provinces, and four Mexican states, according to the International Crane Foundation. Biologists estimate that 700 to 1,400 of these wading birds lived in North America at the time of the Civil War. As sodbusting and wetland drainage destroyed nesting habitat, their number plummeted. By 1890 the species had disappeared from the heart of its range in the north-central United States.
As cranes vanished, hunters and museum collectors became even more determined to obtain adults and eggs, killing perhaps 250 from 1870 to 1924. In Minnesota the last confirmed breeding occurred on Elbow Lake in Grant County in 1876.
The last nonmigratory flock, living in southwestern Louisiana, stood at 13 in 1940; then a storm killed seven. During the next several years, more died, until the sole survivor was captured in 1950. It was shipped to the single remaining migratory flock, which wintered in Texas, where it was attacked and killed by other whooping cranes.
Meanwhile, the migratory flock, wintering on the Gulf Coast, faced its own dangers. Designation of the Texas wintering grounds as Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in 1937 had not produced an immediate benefit, as dredging and boat traffic further destroyed whooping crane habitat. In the winter of 1941-42, the flock reached its nadir of just 15 birds.
The Aransas flock was something of a mystery. No one seemed to know where the birds flew north to nest each spring. It wasn't until 1954 that a fire crew, flying by helicopter near the Hay River in central Canada, spotted three whooping cranes. Later aerial surveys pinpointed the nests in northern Alberta in Wood Buffalo National Park, which had been established to protect bison.
Their habitat protected now in the north and south, the Aransas-Wood Buffalo flock slowly grew. Nonetheless, the species' survival depended on this single flock, vulnerable to disease, storms, and other catastrophes. Biologists decided to establish captive flocks as an insurance policy. In 1967 they began to collect eggs on the Wood Buffalo nesting grounds.
Whooping cranes lay two eggs, but usually only one chick survives; so scientists could snitch one egg without hurting production. With these eggs, they established a captive flock at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. As the Patuxent flock multiplied, the scientists established additional captive flocks until they no longer needed to take wild eggs.
Wildlife managers tried to buy more insurance by establishing new wild flocks. In an experiment begun in 1975 at Grays Lake NWR in Idaho, they slipped eggs into the nests of sandhill cranes. The smaller sandhills raised the whooping crane chicks and even led them on fall migrations to Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the whooping cranes imprinted on their smaller cousins and, when they reached breeding age, looked for love with sandhills, not with other whooping cranes. The experiment was deemed an interesting failure. After peaking at 33 individuals in 1984-85, the flock dwindled and eventually died out.
Biologists didn't quit. A whooping crane "recovery team" of U.S. and Canadian biologists adopted a plan in 1986 that called for increasing the Aransas-Wood Buffalo flock to at least 40 nesting pairs and establishing two other wild flocks of 25 pairs apiece.
One of those new flocks would be a nonmigratory group in central Florida. Started in 1993 on the Kissimmee Prairie, the group has grown to about 100 birds. In the spring of 2000, cranes successfully mated and produced chicks for the first time. Though the young were killed by predators, the flock persisted. In spring 2003, eight eggs were laid, at least four hatched, and two chicks have survived. In 1999 state and federal agencies and private groups such as the International Crane Foundation formed the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership to establish another migratory flock. For breeding grounds, they picked Necedah NWR in central Wisconsin.
Located in the vast peatland known as the Great Central Wisconsin Swamp, the land was ditched, drained, and farmed in the early 1900s but tax-forfeited during the Depression and purchased by the federal government. Designated as a 43,000-acre refuge in 1939, Necedah consists of sprawling wetlands, sedge meadows, and woodlands, everything a nesting whooping crane could want. Grasslands and oak savannas are maintained by logging and burning. Necedah harbors a variety of notable animals, including federally endangered Karner blue butterflies, red-headed woodpeckers, bald and golden eagles, black bears, fishers, and gray wolves. Its value for wildlife is enhanced by vast public holdings nearby. Said refuge manager Larry Wargowsky, "We've got a lot of acres to do different things for different species."
The next task was to choose wintering grounds for the flock. The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership decided the birds should winter in Florida's Chassahowitzka NWR, 31,000 acres of estuaries and hardwood swamps, where cranes could occupy open wetlands and dine on abundant blue crabs. Chassahowitzka was far enough from the two other flocks that the birds would remain separate and unlikely to be wiped out simultaneously by disasters such as disease or storms.
Finally, researchers had to figure out how to teach the cranes to negotiate the 1,250-mile route between Necedah and Chassahowitzka. To test one idea, researchers raised a batch of the much more common sandhill cranes in pens on Necedah in the summer of 2000. That fall, pilots from the nonprofit group Operation Migration, dressed as sandhill cranes, led young sandhills to Florida behind ultralight airplanes. The next spring, the sandhills returned to Necedah on their own. Project managers decided to repeat the experiment-this time with whooping cranes.
DURING THE SPRING of 2001, biologists at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center began exposing whooping crane eggs to recordings of crane whoops and ultralight airplane engine noise. Hatchlings were fed by people dressed as whooping cranes so the birds would imprint on their own species rather than humans. With this preparation, 10 chicks were shipped to Necedah.
There the chicks lived in outdoor pens, surrounded by barriers including electric fencing. "Imagine all the investment in the bird," said Wargowsky, ticking through a list of potential predators-great horned owls, eagles, badgers, red fox, wolves, coyotes, weasels, mink, and bears. "We have a tremendous armory to make sure the birds are safe."
The growing chicks began training. To the sound of recorded calls and engine noise, the birds followed a costumed pilot around the grounds. As they matured and grew flight feathers, they ran along behind a taxiing ultralight. In August they followed an ultralight into the air. Through late summer and early fall, the birds took longer and longer flights to build endurance. ,/p>
In mid-October ultralight pilots and eight cranes took off and flew 29 miles south. Alternately flying and waiting out winds and storms, the cranes and pilots hopscotched across the Midwest and Southeast, covering 20 to nearly 100 miles a day for 23 of 48 days, until they reached Chassahowitzka NWR.
The following spring the young cranes flew back to Necedah without guidance. That spring and summer, biologists at Necedah raised and trained an-other batch of young cranes. That fall, the flock of 16 (known as the "Class of '02") followed ultralights to Chassahowitzka in 49 days.
Hoopla over the young cranes and their costumed handlers spread to nearby Necedah, a one-stoplight town next to the refuge. "The community is really behind this project," Wargowsky said. Crane banners decorate the streets. Public agencies and local groups sponsor the Necedah Whooping Crane Festival in September. A local bank sign flashes progress of the migration. "It's really been beneficial," Wargowsky said. "Species are going to benefit by it. The refuge is going to benefit by it. The local community is benefiting by it. It's a win-win situation for everybody."
In spring 2003, 21 cranes returned, unguided, to Wisconsin. Among them was the female (from the 2002 brood) that flirted with Minnesota residence. So far, male cranes "have been coming back tight to this area," Wargowsky said. But females have wandered, not only to Minnesota, but also to Iowa and Illinois.
Last spring 17 new chicks also arrived from the Patuxent flock for training at Necedah. One was fatally injured in a collision with an ultralight on takeoff, but the remaining 16 trained through the summer and fall, and headed south Oct. 16. They were grounded for several days in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia in late November because of head winds, storms, and floods. But in early December, after 54 days of flights and layovers, including one day in which cranes and ultralights covered a record 200 miles, all 16 arrived at their Florida wintering grounds.
Meanwhile, "experienced" cranes, including the young bird that wandered into Minnesota, migrated on their own to Florida. Outfitted with transmitters, they were tracked with radio receivers.
Wargowsky said ultralight-assisted migrations are planned for about two more years, until the oldest cranes reach breeding age (about 5), raise chicks of their own, and lead them south to Chassahowitzka. Additional birds will be hatched in captivity and released at Necedah until the goal of 25 breeding pairs is met. Researchers expect these young to follow the older cranes south too, so ultralights will no longer be needed. Then succeeding generations will be able to lead their young without human help.
The federal Endangered Species Act and similar Canadian legislation protect whooping cranes from hunting and harassment. Currently, the Aransas-Wood Buffalo flock numbers 194; the Kissimmee nonmigratory flock, about 100; and the Necedah-Chassahowitzka flock, nearly 40. When recovery plan goals are reached and all three flocks have been self-sustaining for at least 10 years, the species will be downlisted from endangered to threatened under the act.
Adult birds returning to Necedah will claim and defend the same large territories year after year. Younger birds will be forced to find territories of their own. As cranes multiply, birds will spill farther afield, perhaps to Minnesota.
Minnesota is ready when they are.
"Frankly, all the preparation we need is the habitat we've set aside over the years," said Carrol Henderson of the DNR Nongame Wildlife Program.
Whooping cranes are most likely to settle into the vast wetlands of eastern and central Minnesota, including Carlos Avery WMA, several wetland complexes in Aitkin County, and Sherburne and Rice Lake NWRs, Henderson said.
"Sometimes the best wildlife management is to take the low-budget approach and just let them wander across the border on their own accord," Henderson said. "I joked with the people at Necedah I was going to get whooping crane decoys to lure a few birds over here. As it is, I don't even have to buy decoys; they're finding Minnesota on their own."
Greg Breining is a freelance writer from St. Paul and a contributing editor of the Volunteer. Reach him at breining@aol.com.
