WhoopingCrane_ClimateChange_Stehn_Tom_AransasPassTX_16October2020_Reel4036.mp3

Tom Stehn [00:00:00] My feelings are the species is in big, big trouble.

Tom Stehn [00:00:05] You're talking about whooping cranes that will only use water that's like up to two feet deep for feeding and wading through and finding crabs. They don't go in deep water.

Tom Stehn [00:00:16] Well, you know, sea level rise is forecast at, what, three, three plus feet by the end of the century. And, you know, some models in Greenland ice cap and all that indicate a sea level rise of more than 20 feet is more realistic.

Tom Stehn [00:00:32] So basically, all the areas that the whooping cranes are using now are going to become unsuitable. And when a species loses its habitat, it's going to go into a steep decline and not survive.

Tom Stehn [00:00:48] So short-term, the picture is rosy. Long-term, because of the sea level rise, it's kind of scary. Now, as, as marsh becomes too deep for the cranes, new marsh will be created. So there's been some studies on what the coast will look like in 50 to 70 years and, you know, with different levels of sea level rise. So there will be some habitat for them. So maybe it's not as dire as I describe.

Tom Stehn [00:01:22] But it's certainly something that the, that the human population as a whole needs to get a handle on. I'm a firm believer that we've got to cut CO2 levels, and we've got to do it immediately, immediately. The science, the science is there. The science is strong. And, and it's just one of those programs that we have to do.

Tom Stehn [00:01:49] So the other, the other issue is the black mangrove is spreading north. It was always, the limit of the black mangrove was always south of the crane range. And so you'd go south of Port Aransas and you'd have black mangrove all the way to the Mexican border. But it didn't go, it didn't move north because it was killed out by freezes during winter. And it takes a good freeze to kill a black mangrove. It's not a matter of freezing temperature for hours. It's more for days. You need several days where the temperature stays below freezing. And then that'll kill the, totally kill the black mangrove. If you get just a short freeze, it may top-kill the mangrove. But it re-sprouts and comes back.

Tom Stehn [00:02:41] So, you know, in the last, my last 10 years work on the refuge, all kinds of black mangrove started coming in and, and moving north. And it's all over Matagorda Island. You see it now, as you take the boat tours through the refuge, it's right along the Intracoastal.

Tom Stehn [00:03:00] And it's a question of how thick is that mangrove going to get? Right now, it's, it's fairly low. It's dispersed. It's probably not that much of a factor. But, any place where I've been, where there's mangrove habitat, it became, it becomes absolutely solid - where there's, where the mangrove displaces all the other plants. You just have a mangrove forest.

Tom Stehn [00:03:28] So it's going to replace the wolfberry. It's going to line all the ponds where the blue crabs are. And it's basically, I think, you know, if the climate keeps warming, then the whole lower Texas coast where the whooping cranes are going to, it's going to become mangrove habitat, which is not suitable for the cranes. So that's just an absolutely huge issue.

Tom Stehn [00:03:55] And something, it was something I started working on towards the very end of my career and I didn't get very far. But whether, you know, whether it's possible to control black mangrove in, in, in the crane area. I mean, there's just thousands of them. So it would be extremely difficult. But to me, we've got to come up with a solution for that. So it's definitely a long-term threat.

Tom Stehn [00:04:25] And then, of course, the other threat is what's going to happen to all the marshes around on the Texas coast. Can they, can enough marshes be protected, and kept human development away from them to provide homes for the whooping cranes? I mean, a lot of marshes, the developers want to turn into canal-lot subdevelopments. And so those battles are going on.

Tom Stehn [00:04:52] And yeah, so the habitat of the whooping crane is really not secure. And so that's a huge threat for the species.