WhoopingCrane_ASmallTown_Archibald_George_ColumbusTX_25February2008_Reel2410.wav

George Archibald [00:00:02] So there are lots of problems facing the whooping crane.

George Archibald [00:00:05] The population has increased to two hundred and sixty six birds since 1940. But you take a small town in Texas there may be 300 people in it. Imagine that's all the humans left on Earth. And that's what we have with our whooping, our whooping crane population.

George Archibald [00:00:27] They breed rather slowly. And the intracoastal canal goes right through the Aransas Refuge. And every day there are enormous barges filled with toxic chemicals. Should there be a spill, an accident at the Refuge, it could have a devastating effect on that little population of birds.

George Archibald [00:00:50] That's why we have made efforts to start other whooping crane populations, such as one in Wisconsin that migrates to Florida. We've been working on that since 2001 and it has shown some promise. The last of the whooping cranes, the ones that winter in Texas, breed way up on the Northwest Territories of Canada and a place called Wood Buffalo Park. Wood Buffalo National Park. It was created for the wood bison and the whooping cranes breed in a huge wetland complex in the northern part of that park.

George Archibald [00:01:27] But the main breeding area for the whooping crane, up until the last nest was destroyed in 1922 in southern Saskatchewan, where the huge prairie marshes, the tallgrass prairie marshes that extended from northern Indiana through this southern Saskatchewan. That today is the world's greatest food basket. Enormous farms, very productive, benefiting from the deep soils build up by the prairie vegetation over the eons. And the land was transformed into agriculture. The wetlands were drained and the cranes were shot by the settlers. A big bird is a big meal.

George Archibald [00:02:13] Now, some of the wetlands have been re established and conservation of grasslands and wetlands is a top priority for the states and the provinces. And one of the restoration efforts is to bring back the whooping cranes in a place called the Sand Counties of central Wisconsin as a breeding area, and a wintering area in the southeast of Florida. And the potential of expanding the wintering area to South Carolina and to Louisiana.

George Archibald [00:02:49] So since 2001, captive-reared birds have been trained to fly to Florida following ultralight aircraft. This is done through a partnership with an organization out of Canada called Operation Migration. These people specialize in raising these cranes and training them to follow. They all wear crane costumes, so the cranes are not imprinted on humans and they get them south, keep them over winter. And in the spring, the birds fly back on their own, having learned the migration route the previous autumn.

George Archibald [00:03:32] So today we have about seventy-five birds in that flock and they started to breed in the wild in 2006. We're going to continue the releases until we have twenty five successfully breeding pairs of wild whooping cranes in central Wisconsin. Right now, we have 14 pairs and one pair breeding successfully. And we're hoping each year for an increment. So it's in its formative stages.

George Archibald [00:04:02] Eventually we hope to establish a non-migratory flock on the huge wetlands of southern Louisiana, where they used to breed up until 1939. They were in - was a resident flock there.

George Archibald [00:04:17] So a lot of effort is being placed in the restoration of the whooping crane.