WhoopingCrane_Between14and16Birds_Blankinship_David_AlamoTX_28February2000_Reel2090.mp3

David Blankinship [00:00:00] Well, I worked with the National Audubon Society on the whooping crane project, actually sort of restarted that project that had been carried on in the late 40s and into the early 50s by Robert Porter Allen by the, for the National Audubon.

David Blankinship [00:00:22] And then I started another project in 1970. And I worked on that for 17 years on the Texas coast.

David Blankinship [00:00:30] Of course, whooping cranes had been reduced. The population in Texas in the in the 40s was down to, depends on whose count you use, somewhere between 14 and 16 birds. And is now then we're up to about 185 or so, I think, this year.

David Blankinship [00:00:55] It was, that was very rewarding. We were able to do a lot of work with studying their habits, their food habits, but particularly working to preserve the habitat. That's the key to virtually everything, is, is habitat.

David Blankinship [00:01:09] And we're able to work to protect the habitat of whooping cranes from things like dredging projects that would have destroyed some of it.

David Blankinship [00:01:21] Also worked to reduce the effects of erosion by boat wakes as they went up and down the Intracoastal Waterway, which goes right through the whooping crane habitat on the Aransas refuge.

David Blankinship [00:01:32] Able to work with oil companies so that they would locate their drilling operations so that they wouldn't be impacting the cranes and their food supply, and all sorts of projects like that.

David Blankinship [00:01:46] And also was able to serve on the whooping crane recovery team and that, for several years, and that was, that's an advisory group that advised the Fish and Wildlife Service on activities that would be beneficial to help the whooping crane to recover in numbers.

David Blankinship [00:02:05] And that, in that program, we were involved with different foster parent programs and reintroduction efforts and also designating areas along the migration route for protection so that the cranes would have places to stop on their migration between Texas and Canada.

David Blankinship [00:02:25] Also worked on some radio tracking projects where we actually had little radios mounted on leg bands on some of the cranes, and we tracked them on their migration back and forth between Canada and Texas. And then we were able to gather information on their migration stopovers.

David Blankinship [00:02:47] This was a big mystery. People really didn't know where these cranes stopped and what kind of habitat they used in migration. And so we were able to get a lot of information on that. And as a result, several areas we have been set aside as critical habitat.