Whooping Cranes Not Hatching

  • One of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young in the wild, but so far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and gone on to migrating. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

Transcript

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

It’s not easy to get whooping cranes to reproduce, but here in Baraboo,
Wisconsin, researchers have had success at getting captive cranes to produce
chicks.

For the last ten years, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has created a
flock of more than 100 whoopers. Researchers hatched the birds
– and trained them to migrate by flying behind ultralight aircraft ….or to
follow adult cranes. The birds now fly between the upper Midwest and
southeastern U.S.

But one of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young
in the wild. So far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and
gone on to migrating.

Jeb Barzen is with the International Crane Foundation. He says they can’t
keep supplying the flock with chicks hatched in captivity:

“It’s expensive. it’s expensive in time, expensive in money…expensive in overall conservation effort, because what you put into whooping crane reintroduction you can’t put into other conservation projects at that time. so to be fully successful …you want that population to be
able to survive on it’s own.”

So far, about 16 million dollars has gone into re-introducing whoopers to
the eastern u.s. More than half of that money came from private donors.

The birds’ main summer home is here at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
in Wisconsin.

It’s not that the cranes don’t get close to each other. If you watch the cranes here, you can spot single cranes and the occasional couple.

Jeb Barzen pauses to watch two tall white cranes having a territorial dispute:

“Ooh! these birds are threatening each other. that’s a preen behind the wing
threat…that the second bird is doing…so these are not birds of the same
pair.”

Researchers don’t know why the birds are not raising more wild chicks. But
they do have some theories. Even when cranes do make nice and produce an
egg – the relatively young cranes may be too inexperienced to be patient
parents. Black flies may drive the birds off their nest. Or the parents
may be low on body fat and take off to find food.

The crane researchers are gathering data to find out what cranes need for a
successful nesting site. They’re using tracking radios to follow some of the
birds.

Anne Lacy is with the International Crane Foundation. Today she’s driving
around southern Wisconsin listening for the whoopers.

“it’s important to look at what choices they make as a young bird
before they breed…to know how they choose those areas….they need for
water for roosting at night…they need that eventually for nesting.”

This kind of research is being ramped up this spring. That’s because an
independent report raised some concerns about the crane recovery effort.
The report was done by consultants hired by the Whooping Crane Eastern
Partnership. It mentions problems with financial oversight, scientific
coordination, and whether the birds’ main summer home – at the Necedah
wildlife refuge – is the best place for them.

Louise Clemency is with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And
she is a co-chair of the eastern partnership. She says the crane recovery
effort won’t make any big changes overnight.

“We’re trying to the time to draw the right conclusions so we can
take the right next step.”

Clemency says decisions on the whooping crane experiment could come next
year. In the meantime..she hopes that some crane eggs laid this spring at
the Necedah refuge will hatch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Whooping Cranes’ Poor Parenting

  • Whooping cranes have been abandoning their nests, and eggs, in search of food (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

About 70 whooping cranes now migrate between the Southeast US and the Midwest.
Wildlife experts have been hoping that more pairs of the birds would start hatching eggs
and raising chicks in the wild.

This spring, at their northern home in Wisconsin, several female cranes did lay eggs and
sat on the nests during cold weather. But when it warmed up, the adult birds abandoned
their nests to look for food.

George Archibald is co-founder of the International Crane Foundation.

“If there is a food stress, when it becomes warmer their drive to feed may increase much
more than when it’s cold.”

Some of the crane eggs were saved and hatched out by wildlife centers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Experts Hopeful for Whooper Eggs

Dozens of whooping cranes are heading north this spring, as an experiment continues to develop a migrating flock of the birds in the Eastern U.S. Wildlife experts hope this’ll be the year the effort will produce its first successful hatch of a crane egg. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Dozens of whooping cranes are heading north this spring, as an
experiment continues to develop a migrating flock of the birds in the
Eastern U.S. Wildlife experts hope this’ll be the year the effort will
produce its first successful hatch of a crane egg. The GLRC’s Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

About sixty of the endangered whooping cranes migrate between the
southeastern U.S. and northern states like Wisconsin and Michigan.
Last summer, for the first time, a few cranes paired off and produced
eggs, but the cranes didn’t stay near their nests and predators destroyed
the eggs.


Rachel Levin of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says this year she’s
more optimistic the cranes will reproduce.


“We have cranes this year that are going to be five years old. Whooping
cranes reach sexual maturity between three and five years old. So, we
are hoping this year that we have cranes that will produce eggs and that are
maybe mature enough this year to stay with those eggs and do their
parental duty.”


One goal of the crane reintroduction project has been to have 25 adult
breeding pairs. For now the project will continue to add to the flock by
bringing in crane chicks from Maryland.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Continuing Success for Migrating Whoopers

  • Whooping cranes are being successfully trained to migrate in the Midwest. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

An experimental flock of whooping cranes is starting to head back to the Midwest. Three birds died while down South over the winter. But later this year, the migrating cranes may start creating their own little replacements. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

An experimental flock of whooping cranes is starting to
head back to the Midwest. Three birds died while down South over
the winter. But later this year, the migrating cranes may start creating
their own little replacements. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Chuck Quirmbach reports:


At least eight whooping cranes have either died or been injured
during the experiment to create a migrating flock of whoopers in the
eastern U.S. But Rachel Levin of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
argues despite the losses, the experiment is going well.


“After 4 years of ultralight led journeys with whooping cranes, we have 45 wild
cranes now where just ten years ago east of the Mississippi we
had no wild whooping cranes.”


However the crane experiment remains unpredictable. Some of the
cranes may not come back to Wisconsin where they received their
migration training behind ultralight aircraft. Last summer, several of the
birds wound up in Michigan. Also some of the cranes may now be
sexually mature and scientists are eager to see if the migrating birds
produce their first offspring.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Exploring a Great Lakes Salt Mine

  • Salt is an essential resource for all people, especially those who live in areas where the roads get icy. (Photo by Lucian Binder)

Ever wonder where road departments get the mountains of salt they use each winter? Here in the Midwest, the answer can be found deep under Lake Erie. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has the
story:

Transcript

Ever wonder where road departments get the mountains of salt
they use each winter? Here in the Midwest, the
answer can be found deep under Lake Erie. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Ann Murray has the story:


Orvosh: “Step right in there.”


Murray: “Ok, thanks.”


For Don Orvosh, an elevator ride nearly 2000 feet underground is just part of the daily grind.


(sound of clanking)


“It’s about a four and a half minute ride to the bottom. 1800… about 1800 feet.”


Orvosh supervises the Cleveland salt mine owned by Cargill Corporation. It’s one of only eleven active salt mines in the country. The mine lies beneath the northern edge of Cleveland and extends about four miles under Lake Erie.


Orvosh: “Most people in the city don’t even realize there’s a mine right here.”


Murray: “Are you all the way down?”


Orvosh: “We’re at the bottom right now. This is it.”


(sound of opening air-lock door)


A few feet from the elevator, Orvosh walks through a series of air-locked metal doors. They rotate to reveal a subterranean repair shop. Massive dump trucks and cranes are fixed here. The cavernous room is also the starting point for hundreds of miles of tunnels. These tunnels connect a honeycomb of old and active areas in the mine. Everyday, 150 workers travel this salt encrusted labyrinth by truck or tram.


“We’re going to get in this little buggy here now and in a couple minutes we’ll be under the lake.”


Lake Erie is a geological newcomer compared to the salt buried below it. This bed – extending from upper New York to Michigan – was formed 410 million years ago. That’s when an ancient sea retreated and left behind its brine. Oil drillers accidentally discovered the deposit in the 1860’s. As Orvosh drives north through the dark passageways, he says salt wasn’t extracted here until many years later.


“This shaft was sunk in the late fifties and the actual mining of salt occurred, started in the early sixties so it’s been here 40 plus years.”


In the last four decades, the mining process has stayed pretty much the same. Orvosh compares it to the room and pillar method used in underground coal extraction. He points up ahead to a brightly lit chamber. Machine generated light bounces off the room’s briny, white walls. Its 20 foot high ceiling is bolstered by pillars of salt the size of double-wide trailers.


Orvosh: “This is an active production section. This is where we are mining salt.”


Murray: “What’s happening here?”


Orvosh: “He’s drilling the face here.”


A miner sits atop a machine with a large needle nosed drill. It bores six holes into the seam. Later in the day, workers will load explosives in the holes and blow out big chunks of salt. Farther into the mine, the loose salt from last night’s blasting is being scooped up by front-end loaders and dumped into a crusher. All of the big chunks are broken into small pieces. Then the salt is loaded on conveyor belts and sent to the mine’s three-story-high underground mill. Salt is crushed, sized, screened and sent to the surface by elevator.


All told, the crews at the Cleveland mine produce two million tons of salt a year. A sizable chunk of the 15 million tons of salt used on icy US roads each winter. Demand for road salt has skyrocketed since it was introduced as a de-icer in the early 1950s. But Robert Springer, a 27- year veteran at this operation, says each mine fights for a market share.


Springer: “It is a competitive market. There’s another salt mine just in the Cleveland area, out there in Morton, Morton Salt.”


Murray: “We needed you today. The roads were really icy. Do you look forward to icy days to keep production up?”


Springer: “I guess you could say we look forward to bad weather. We enjoy the bad weather because we know there’s going to be salt used.”


(sound of radio and weather report)


Back on the surface, Bob Springer has gotten his wish… Cleveland has just been hit with a winter storm. At least a dozen trucks swing through the mine’s loading dock to pick up tons of salt. Later in the day, salt will be dumped onto barges and transported across the Great Lakes to places like Chicago and Toronto. This is high season for road salt. The crews here know that come March, they’ll start rousing salt from its ancient bed for the winter of 2006.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

A Look at the Western Whooping Crane Flock

  • The Eastern flock of whooping cranes train for migration by following an ultralight. Photo courtesy of Operation Migration, Inc.

Some of the three dozen whooping cranes that winter in Florida have begun their spring migration to the Great Lakes region. More cranes are expected to fly north within the next few weeks. Wildlife officials put together that experimental migrating flock for the Eastern U.S., in case something happens to the only other migrating flock of whoopers, which winters in Texas and spends summers in western Canada. Scientists say there are several potential threats to the western birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports from the Texas Gulf Coast:

Transcript

Some of the three dozen whooping cranes that winter in Florida have begun their spring
migration to the Great Lakes region. More cranes are expected to fly north within the next few
weeks. Wildlife officials put together that experimental migrating flock for the Eastern U.S. in
case something happens to the only other migrating flock of whoopers, which winters in Texas
and spends summers in western Canada. Scientists say there are several potential threats to the
western birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports from the Texas
Gulf Coast:

The sight of a five foot tall adult whooping crane is awe-inspiring to many people. A Minnesota
man named Gary, who lives in Texas during the winter, says he loves to see the brilliantly white
whoopers and their amazing wing span.

“They’re pretty – huge and beautiful, pretty bird. Something we don’t have in Minnesota.”

The birds winter here at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a fifteen mile long by seven
mile wide peninsula north of the city of Corpus Christi. Aransas was the wintertime home for the
whoopers when the population of the endangered cranes dwindled to just 15 birds in the 1940s.
Today there are 194 whooping cranes in the Western flock.

“There’s a family out there.”

Crane Researcher Colleen Satyshur crouches down in a remote area of the refuge. she points at
three cranes.

“They’re just on the other side of the waterway that runs on the far side of the levy there. Two
parents on the outside and one baby in the middle”

The birds come to within about 100 yards.

It seems like a perfect place for the cranes. But because there is such a small number of birds, the
flock is at risk.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whooping crane Coordinator Tom Stehn says 194 whoopers in one
site is just not that many.

“That’s just not much genetics in the population and there’s big threats to the population whenever
there’s concentrated in such low numbers.”

And a small gene pool is just the beginning of problems for the western flock of whoopers.

A few miles south of the Aransas refuge an earth mover loads dirt and rock into dump trucks.
Development along the Gulf of Mexico is taking up land. The human population here is expected
to double within forty years. Tom Stehn says that’ll increase demand for freshwater. He says
Texas is looking at diverting river water that currently flows into the Aransas refuge, where it
sustains crabs, a major food source for the whooping cranes.

“The crabs need the fresh water coming down the rivers, so if we dam up those rivers, prevent those inflows, the cranes
are gonna suffer.”

The refuge managers also worry about maritime accidents.

(sound of boat)

Boats like this one that travel the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway on the border of the Aransas refuge
sometimes carry toxic chemicals that could wipe out the birds with one spill.

Stehn says the list of potential risks to cranes is extensive – it includes things such as flying into
power lines along the cranes 2,400 mile migration route. He says there are new concerns, such as
global warming and West Nile virus.

Barring any disasters from those threats, Stehn says he’s pretty confident that generations of
whooping cranes will continue to winter in Texas for another 50 to 100 years. But Stehn says
even the crane’s longevity is in some ways a weakness.

“It’s a long lived bird with slow reproductive potential, so it’s gonna struggle to adjust if change
happens too rapidly.”

Stehn says the wildlife agencies can’t protect the birds from everything. But researchers can learn
more about the whooping cranes’ habits and hopefully that will help figure out the best ways
to aid the birds.

(sound of whooping cranes)

Help may come by tracking the cranes. This winter, Colleen
Satyshur recorded some of the birds’ calls. Some scientists believe
every crane has its own unique voiceprint that can be measured
through soundwaves run through a computer. Satyshur says they
think they might be able to use the voiceprinting as a way to
see which cranes are doing what.

“Which pairs are bringing down chicks, how many years, might tell us something new we can use to help us conserve the birds.”

Many people see the whoopers comeback as an inspiring symbol of wildlife preservation.
Keeping an eye on the birds is not just about the safety of the whooping cranes. Even with the
eastern flock becoming established and flying between Florida and the Great Lakes. Losing the
western flock of whooping cranes for any reason would be a blow to the entire wildlife
preservation movement.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach in Southeast Texas.

Related Links

Whoopers Make Spring Migration

A test flock of whooping cranes is winging its way north from Florida to Wisconsin this month. That makes wildlife officials who are trying to restore the flock very happy. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A test flock of whooping cranes is winging its way north from Florida to Wisconsin this month.
That makes wildlife officials who are trying to restore the flock very happy. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership is setting up the only migrating flock of whoopers in
the Eastern U.S. Almost two dozen birds are taking part and wildlife officials hope to teach
flying skills to another 20 crane chicks this summer.


Beth Goodman is whooping crane coordinator at the Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources. She says the numbers show the experiment is on track.


“It underscores we set a goal that seems reasonable, and our goal is establishing 25 breeder pairs
and 125 migrating birds in the eastern migratory flock by the year 2020.”


The whooper was at its greatest danger of extinction sixty years ago when there were only 15
birds counted in the wild. The new flock already has exceeded that number. Goodman says one
of the tougher tasks this year will be raising enough private money to keep the project going
strong.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.

Safer Winter Home for Whooping Cranes?

The small flock of whooping cranes being reintroduced in the eastern U.S. may have a safer time at their winter home in Florida this year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach explains:

Transcript

The small flock of whooping cranes being reintroduced in the eastern U.S. may have a safer time
at their winter home in Florida this year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
explains:


Last year, bobcats killed two of the migrating whooping cranes that were staying at the
Chassahowitzka wildlife refuge in Florida.


The cranes like to roost in a certain amount of water, but when the tide level inside their pen
wasn’t right, the birds went to an unprotected area and the bobcats attacked. This year, refuge
managers have taken steps to help the 20 or so cranes roost inside their pens.


Whooping crane Eastern partnership spokesperson, Heather Ray, says many tons of oyster shells
have been dumped into a protected area where the tide flows in and out.


“As the tide goes out, the birds can, you know, move down on this oyster bed and still be in water
and as it comes in move up on it and still be in water, so they will hear predators approaching.”


It took about 300 helicopter loads to build the oyster reef. The whooping cranes will stay in
Florida until February or March, then are expected to head back toward Wisconsin.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach reporting.

Whooping Cranes Land in Florida

A flock of endangered whooping cranes has successfully made it to wintering grounds in Florida. The birds were led by an ultralight plane and costumed handlers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A flock of endangered whooping cranes has successfully made it to wintering grounds in Florida. The birds were led by an ultra-light plane and costumed handlers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


In an effort to help the endangered whooping cranes establish a new migration route, wildlife experts trained the flock to follow an ultra-light plane. The migration started in Wisconsin with a flock of eight young whooping cranes. One refused to stay with the flock and ended up being driven in a van to Florida. One bird hit a power line and was killed. But six whooping cranes made the entire trip. Chuck Underwood with the National Fish and Wildlife Service says unlike previous trips with more cooperative Sandhill cranes, whooping cranes turned out to be extremely independent.


“It was a guess any given day which bird might decide to break off and do his own thing. So, that was a challenge all the way down.”


Wildlife managers say the birds will find their own way back to Wisconsin in the spring. Hopefully it will begin a regular migration pattern, the second of wild whooping cranes in North America.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.