Whooping Cranes Total a Record 149 at Texas Refuge
A record number of whooping cranes have been tallied at their winter home on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Authorities counted 149 of the endangered birds this week at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. That’s the most since the federal government started taking censuses in the 1930s. The previous record was 146, set in the winter of 1990-1991.
Whooping cranes nearly became extinct in the 1940s, when the world’s population fell to just over a dozen. The cranes that winter at the refuge, established in 1937, are the descendants of those few birds.
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