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(12-27) 04:00 PST Austwell, Texas -- One of the most beloved groups of winter Texans is back, in the largest number in a century and with a record 45 youngsters in tow, including an even rarer seven pairs of twins.They flew 2,400 miles from Canada's Northwest Territories and can be seen munching on blue crabs and bright red-orange wolfberries among the marshes of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. The whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, whose numbers dwindled to fewer than 20 in 1941, is not only back from the brink of extinction but also thriving -- a comeback story, federal wildlife officials say, that illustrates how a coordinated conservation effort can save a species. "The whooping crane continues to mirror the success of endangered species recovery when man sets his mind to it," said Tom Stehn, the national whooping crane coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We have come a long way, but we do have a long, long way to go." This year, the nation's only natural wild population of whooping cranes reached a milestone. Stehn's mid-December census of the migratory crane flock at the wildlife refuge, where he is based, numbered 237. Combined with the number of birds in captivity in three special flocks raised for reintroduction to the wild and those in zoos, the crane population now numbers 518. This is the first time in more than a century that whooping cranes have numbered more than 500.
In 2001, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, an American-Canadian partnership of governments, nonprofit organizations, citizens and corporations, developed a method to teach captive-raised whoopers how to migrate so they could be introduced to the wild. Since then, young cranes have been led in migration every fall by gliders flying from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin to the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, 1,200 miles away. The cranes return on their own in the spring. Today's threats to the species are power lines, which cranes crash into during migration; loss of stopover habitat; a lack of genetic diversity; disease; and a decline in habitat conditions at the Aransas refuge because less freshwater is flowing into the salt marsh. "There are a lot of threats out there on the horizon, and that's what worries us," Stehn said. The whooping crane is likely to remain on the endangered species list until the migratory flock numbers more than 5,000, he said. |