An Overhead Journey
For the first time in a century, endangered whooping cranes fly into Tennessee
by Rob Simbeck
Last week, for the first time in at least a century, a flock of whooping cranes flew into Tennessee. Five of the endangered birds followed two ultralight planes into a field in Cumberland County, two hours east of Nashville. It was the 11th stop in a Wisconsin-to-Florida migration plotted by conservationists who are hopeful the birds will adopt the annual journey permanently.
It is a historic operation generating widespread attention and support, but fraught with peril and uncertainty as well. Bad weather hampered the early part of the migration. It took 15 days to complete the first five legs of the journey, and one bird died when it flew into a power line in Illinois after high winds blew down the overnight holding pen. It took three attempts to get the birds to cross the first interstate highway they encountered. Another bird died of stress in September, and even the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had an impact, as flight restrictions kept the project’s ultralight planes on the ground for several days during the pre-migration training phase.
It is all part of a wondrously improbable $1.3 million undertaking, mixing complicated politics and environmental romanticism in an attempt to help bring back a natural wonder almost lost for good. Today there are fewer than 200 migrating whooping cranes, in a flock that breeds in Canada and winters on the Texas coast. Sixty years ago, that flock numbered just 15 birds. Biologists are aware that a catastrophic event, from hurricane to disease to oil spill, could decimate the group.
The current migration through Tennessee is an effort to establish a second migratory flock and help assure the species’ recovery. A nonmigrating flock of about 80 birds lives in central Florida, and another group is being raised in captivity at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.
The birds in this migration effort were hatched at Patuxent in the spring. They are so young that they are just developing the trumpeting call of their elders, a territorial and mating cry that booms out from a coiled windpipe longer than the bird is tall and that can be audible for miles. Although they were raised in captivity, they have never seen the human form up close. The people around them wear form-hiding cloth garments, and those who work closely with them use a false crane head at the end of one arm for feeding.
Though collectively they weigh less than 100 pounds now, the cranes’ ultimate size is startling. At nearly five feet tall, they dwarf turkeys, and they are bigger than storks, herons or flamingoes. They are a brilliant white with black wingtips and red heads, with these juveniles showing a wash of rust on the head and neck.
The experiment is being conducted by the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, which links dozens of governmental entities from Canada to Florida, as well as a host of private and public landowners and contributors, led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Ornithological Society joined forces with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Foundation in purchasing 2,500 acres near the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant north of Chattanooga to be set aside for wildlife, including migrating sandhill cranes and, it is hoped, whooping cranes.
“This is Tennessee’s opportunity to help save the most endangered crane in the world,” says Dan Hicks of the TWRA. “It’s going to add a very exciting aspect to wildlife-watching in Tennessee. It’s our chance to do something on a grassroots level to make a difference.”
The actual flying is being overseen by three members of Operation Migration, a nonprofit organization founded in Canada to fund research into aircraft-led migration. The group has successfully led three other species—Canada geese, trumpeter swans and sandhill cranes—on migratory journeys.
Whooping cranes, never numerous, had been brought to the edge of extinction by plume hunters and habitat encroachment. Protection helped bring their numbers back to more than 40 by the mid-’60s, and then came the first of two bold experiments that have led to the current migration.
In 1967, biologists began bringing crane eggs from their Canadian breeding ground to Patuxent for artificial incubation and hand rearing. Then there was the work of Bill Lishman and Joe Duff, who helped conduct the first human-led bird migration in 1993 with Canada geese.
The partnership hopes to lead 15 to 18 birds on the same route next year, and to lead new groups for three years after that. They hope eventually to get 25 breeding pairs in the flock, a point at which they believe the flock can withstand normal losses due to predation and disease.
The cranes, continuing this week into Georgia, are expected to retrace their steps northward on their own in February or March.
Daily updates on the operation are available at www.operationmigration.com and www.bringbackthecranes.com.
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