Whooping Cranes’ Absence at Refuge Raises Concerns

The sign behind the counter at the visitors center on this jewel of the Rio Grande said it all:

Canada geese 230

Snow geese 14,100

Ducks 20,250

Sandhill cranes 8,760

Whooping cranes 0

No whooping cranes wintered this year at the refuge for the first time since 1975, when an experimental migrating flock of the endangered birds was established.

Only two stuffed whoopers, a young one and a mature one, stand mute in a glass case at the center, displayed next to a sandhill crane--a cousin and failed foster parent. The center doesn’t even carry posters of the poster child of endangered species.

“That’s really sad,” Linda Getz said as she visited Bosque del Apache from Bloomington, Minn.

“They were one of the highlights,” said Nettie Ireland of Plainfield, Ill. “You’d see them far off. The first time I saw them, I said, ‘You can’t miss that one.’ ”

Whooping cranes are the tallest birds in North America, standing about 5 feet with a long, sinuous neck and a red and black head with a long, pointed beak. Snow-white body feathers are accented by black-tipped wings that span about 7 1/2 feet.

The 57,200-acre refuge--1,100 acres farmed and 2,000 flooded with Rio Grande water--is host to 350 species of birds annually, from birds of prey to songbirds. It is visited by coyotes, bobcats, cougars, elk and mule deer. In the summer, the refuge’s cottonwood trees stand verdant in contrast to the surrounding spare Chihuahuan desert.

So where have all the whoopers gone?

The goal of the experimental migrating flock was to boost the number of whoopers, which dwindled to a low of 15 nationwide in 1941. The numbers have since rebounded to 396.

The program began in 1975 with four young whoopers. Biologists began placing whooper eggs in sandhill crane nests at the Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Idaho. The plan was to have the sandhills raise the whoopers at their summer digs in Idaho and show them the way 750 miles south to bask in the bosque in central New Mexico during the winter.

As the whoopers matured, they would bond with their own and the result would be a fresh crop of whooping crane chicks.

The plan didn’t work.

The whoopers didn’t bond and they didn’t reproduce. There seemed to be more sexual chemistry between female whoopers and male sandhills.

“Then there was a problem of getting birds of reproductive age together in breeding areas. It’s a wide area where they were summering,” said wildlife biologist John Taylor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Bosque del Apache.

Six or seven years of drought resulted in severe challenges for newly hatched whoopers in Idaho in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The birds’ food supply was limited, and some of the whoopers died during the migration.

The number of power lines built in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado “had grown exponentially, and there were a lot of crane losses to power-line strikes,” said Tom Stehn, whooping crane recovery team coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

But Taylor said it was more a problem of whoopers following their smaller foster parents into electric lines everywhere.

In 1997, four whoopers raised by Kent Clegg, an Idaho biologist, followed him and his ultralight airplane south to the Bosque del Apache.

Clegg’s effort “seemed to have great promise,” Taylor said. “They were associating with each other.”

But by then, the Rocky Mountain program was doomed.

“In 1997, when Kent Clegg did his experiment, it was pretty well understood that this was just an experiment. It was not an attempt to get a new flock started,” said Stehn, who is also a biologist at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.

It was the last time whooping cranes were released in the West.

The fate of the Western whooper program was sealed in 1999.

The Pacific and Central flyway councils, which issue waterfowl hunting guidelines to the federal government, recommended against continuing the Rocky Mountain flock, despite its proven ability to attract tourists and bird watchers.

“The general concern was that having an endangered species around would cause Fish and Wildlife to reduce the amount of hunting opportunities,” Stehn said. That would mean shorter seasons or closing specific areas to hunting.

“But we in the whooping crane program feel that we can definitely have both. We can have hunting and can protect whooping cranes. The two can coexist,” he said.

Also in 1999, the New Mexico Game Commission decided to oppose introducing any more whooping cranes into the Rocky Mountain flock, citing a lack of sufficient habitat to maintain a self-sustaining whooper population. The group also said New Mexico was outside the historical winter range of whoopers--”a fact that has been debated for years,” Taylor said.

Stehn said his recovery team felt that any attempt to get a new flock started would mean choosing a place where there would be the best chance of success.

The team looked east.

“I think it’s a question of desire, and the Western states were reluctant to continue any recovery work and when we went east, they were thrilled with the idea,” Stehn said.

Last year, a migratory flock of eight whoopers was started between the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida and the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin.

The birds followed ultralight airplanes to learn the route. They completed their 1,200-mile journey to Florida Dec. 3. One whooper died when it hit an electric line. Bobcats killed two more.

Taylor still believes Clegg’s experiment would work in the West, “as long as the flyway councils and whooping crane recovery team are in agreement. I think that would give it a green light.”

Any concern over whether whoopers may be killed during hunting of light geese at the Bosque del Apache has been mollified. Taylor said there has never been a hunting incident involving whoopers in the middle Rio Grande Valley from Cochiti Lake to Elephant Butte.

Of the 396 whoopers surviving today, 174 winter at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and spend their summers at Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada’s Northwest Territory; 113 are in captivity; 103 are in a nonmigratory flock in the Kissimmee, Fla., area; and five split time between Florida and Wisconsin.

The birds can live up to 40 years, but 25 is a more typical life span in the wild, experts say.

A 19-year-old whooper--the lone survivor of the experimental flock--spent this winter in New Mexico, at the state’s Casa Colorada wildlife management area north of the refuge.

The whooper left at the end of February for its summer home at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Montana.