Fourteen ultra-light-led migrating whooping cranes have arrived in their Florida wintering grounds after traveling more than 1,200 miles from Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. Half of flock arrived on Jan. 17 at St. Marks National Wildlife, 25 miles south of Tallahassee along the Gulf Coast of Florida. The other half continued south to Chassahowitzka NWR, 65 miles north of St. Petersburg, arriving on Jan. 23.

"This Class of 2008 brings another exciting year for this great partnership and it gets us one step closer to seeing the recovery of this magnificent species,” said Keith Ramos, acting refuge manager at Chassahowitzka NWR. “The staff at Chassahowitzka NWR worked hard to make sure that everything was ready for the arrival of the birds. We are very excited to be a part of this project and to be able to share our excitement with our new partners at the St. Marks NWR." 

“St. Marks has been anticipating the birds’ arrival for months, and the outpouring of community support around Wakulla and Leon counties has been phenomenal,” said Terry Peacock, refuge manager at St. Marks NWR. “We are thankful for the help of all of our volunteers who have assisted with pen set-up and helped with other preparations around the refuge.”

This is the eighth year the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, an international, public-private coalition, has conducted the ultralight project to reintroduce this endangered species in eastern North America. Each fall, pilots from the nonprofit Operation Migration, a WCEP partner, lead a new generation of cranes behind their ultralight aircraft to Florida. The cranes make the return flight to the Upper Midwest on their own in the spring.

This year's migration began from Necedah NWR on Oct. 17, with four ultralight aircraft leading the birds southward. To help speed the migration and improve safety for the birds and the pilots, the team took a new route this year. Pilots lead the birds around rather than over the Appalachian Mountains, taking them through the state of Alabama for the first time. The ultralight-led flock also passed through Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia before crossing the Florida border.

Seventy-three migratory whooping cranes now exist in the wild in eastern North America — including the first whooping crane chick to hatch in the wild in Wisconsin in more than a century. Many of these cranes have settled into their wintering locations in parts of the Southeast, including Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida. State partners from Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia provided strong support throughout the migration.

Operation Migration's pilots led the project’s first whooping crane chicks from Necedah NWR to Chassahowitzka NWR in 2001.  Each subsequent year, biologists and pilots have conditioned and guided additional groups of juvenile cranes to Chassahowitzka.

The USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland hatches and rears the whooping crane chicks that take part in the reintroduction project. The center introduces the young cranes to ultralight aircraft and raises them in isolation from humans. To ensure the impressionable cranes remain wild, project biologists and pilots adhere to a strict no-talking rule, broadcast recorded crane calls and wear costumes designed to mask the human form whenever they are around the cranes.

Each June, the center ships a new class of cranes to Necedah NWR. Upon their arrival, the cranes begin a summer of conditioning behind the ultralights to prepare them for their fall migration. Pilots lead the birds on gradually longer training flights at the refuge throughout the summer until the young cranes are ready to follow the aircraft along the migration route.

In October, International Crane Foundation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists also released six additional chicks into the company of older birds at Necedah NWR. This technique, “direct autumn release,” places chicks with adult whoopers or sandhill cranes so they can learn a fall migration route from the older birds. Biologists are using the technique to complement the success of the ultralight-led migrations. They rear the chicks for direct autumn release in the field and release them with older birds after the chicks fledged, or learned to fly. This method of reintroduction has undergone extensive testing and has been successful with sandhill cranes. But it remains to be seen if it will work with whooping cranes or with mixed species.

Most of the project’s whooping cranes spend the summer in central Wisconsin, where they use areas on the Necedah NWR, as well as various state and private lands. Cranes taking part in the project have also spent time in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and other upper Midwest states.

Whooping cranes were on the verge of extinction in the 1940s. Today, only about 500 birds exist, 350 of them in the wild. Aside from the 73 Wisconsin-Florida birds, the original population of whooping cranes nests at the Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories of Canada and winters at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas Coast.

A nonmigrating flock of approximately 30 birds lives year-round in central Florida. The remaining 150 whooping cranes are in captivity in breeding facilities and zoos around North America.

Whooping cranes, who earned the name for their loud and penetrating unison calls, live and breed in wetland areas, where they feed on crabs, clams, frogs and seeds. They are distinctive animals, standing five feet tall, with white bodies, black wing tips and red crowns on their heads.

The following organizations are founding members of the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership:

• International Crane   Foundation
• Operation Migration Inc.
• Wisconsin Department of   Natural Resources
• U.S. Fish   and Wildlife Service
• U.S. Geological Survey’s   Patuxent Wildlife   Research Center   and National Wildlife Health Center
• National Fish and   Wildlife Foundation
• Natural Resources   Foundation of Wisconsin,   and the International Whooping Crane Recovery Team.

Many other flyway states, provinces, private individuals and conservation groups have joined forces with and support WCEP by donating resources, funding and personnel. More than 60 percent of the project’s estimated $1.6 million annual budget comes from private sources in the form of grants, public donations and corporate sponsorship.

For information on the USFWS National Wildlife Refuges involved in this project, visit the following link:

St. Marks NWR: http://www.fws.gov/saintmarks/.

Chassahowitzka NWR: http://www.fws.gov/chassahowitzka/

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge: http://www.fws.gov/midwest/necedah/

For more information on the whooping crane project, its partners and how you can help, visit the WCEP Web site at http://www.bringbackthecranes.org.  A Wisconsin Whooping Crane Management Plan that describes project goals and management and monitoring strategies shared and implemented by the partners is online at: http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/er/birds/wcrane/wcraneplan.htm.

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