New flock of endangered cranes on its way

A founder of Operation Migration thinks the project has rebounded from last year's loss.

MILWAUKEE - For a seventh year, young whooping cranes have taken off from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin, led by ultralight aircraft on a 1,250-mile journey to a refuge in Citrus County.

The 17 birds that were hatched in captivity are part of an effort to establish a second migratory flock of the endangered birds in North America. The journey that started Saturday takes about two months, with many stops where the young birds are kept in portable pens along the way.

After that, the birds migrate in spring and fall on their own. Another 10 young cranes are to be released to join adult cranes in the wild in Wisconsin and migrate south with them in a process called direct autumn release.

The project is recovering from a tragic accident in the winter when a huge gulf storm killed all but one of the 18 young cranes that had been led south by an ultralight. The survivor died later. With several other deaths from various causes, the adult flock in the wild is at about 52 cranes.

Pilot Joe Duff, 57, from Port Perry, Ontario, is co-founder of Operation Migration, the nonprofit group that developed the concept of ultralight-led migration.

He says last winter's tragedy has been difficult to overcome, but it also has spread the message about saving cranes and other species and conserving resources.

How close do you think the project is to the goal of establishing a self-sustaining migratory flock of these birds?

About halfway, I would suppose. In order to establish a self-sustaining flock we need about 125 individuals including 25 breeding pairs, and we have just over 50 now with another 27 birds to be reintroduced. So if the captive flocks every year increase their output allowing us to put more birds out every year, I think we're roughly halfway there, even though it's taken us seven years to get to this point.

Can you give me some examples of how the project rebounded from last winter's losses?

The impact of that affected a lot of things. Initially it didn't help our funding. It set us back emotionally. That whole loss came at the worst possible time. Everything was done, all the funds were raised and all the bills were paid and all the work was done - and then you lose the birds. I know we had one of the most successful years we've ever had. We had zero losses. Our survival rate was 100 percent from the time we started training birds in Wisconsin until we finished the migration, and that's unheard of....

But you know I guess if there is any silver lining, there were somewhere around 500 to 700 media stories worldwide about that. It certainly spread the word about the need for conservation of whooping cranes. It certainly demonstrated exactly why we're doing this. The population is not safe. We could lose the entire species to storms or oil spills or some sort of catastrophic event.

What is it about these birds that seems to draw so much interest?

First of all, they're a very reclusive bird. A whooping crane represents wildness and not the kind of wildness you get in your back yard. I'm talking about real wildness. You find whooping cranes in areas as isolated as where you find bears and cougars.

On top of that it's 51/2 feet tall, so it's taller than anything else we have in North America. It's a big impressive bird. It's all white with the black wing tips and it has this antiphonal call that you can hear for miles. ... Then you add that mystique of just being down to 15 and still surviving and scratching their way back from the edge of extinction. ... Then you add that to this whole whooping crane aircraft-led migration reintroduction.

Can you sum up what you think this project means on a broad scale, the creation of a migratory flock of a species that as recently as the mid 1940s was down to only 15 or so individuals?

Our focus has been to safeguard whooping cranes from extinction, and that in itself is a pretty noble cause. But the whooping crane is really an icon for endangered species. You can't pick up a brochure or a booklet on endangered species anywhere without seeing a picture of a whooping crane on the cover.

[Last modified October 13, 2007, 21:13:44]