Budget cuts may spare species

Texas’ population of whooping cranes is self-sustaining

Texas’ whooping crane population largely will be insulated from President Donald Trump’s proposal to ax the endangered birds’ breeding program — for now, at least.

Trump recently released his budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, which would slash a number of programs designed to prevent the extinction of species, such as the $1.5 million Patuxent whooping crane breeding program.

“Trump’s budget would be a staggering death blow to some wildlife species that are already trying to fight off extinction,” said Stephanie Kurose, endangered species policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Whooping cranes have been on the endangered species list since 1967, but the population began dwindling decades earlier because of overhunting and conversion of the Great Plains to agriculture.

So in 1966, scientists at the Maryland-based Patuxent Wildlife Research Center began a

captive breeding program to increase the numbers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That breeding program is the one on the chopping block.

Lucky for Texas, the flock that travels 2,600 miles to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge from Canada every winter is the largest of four North American flocks and the only one that is self-sustaining, Kurose said.

That means Texas’ flock — last winter the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated it was 431 strong, up from 254 during the 2011-2012 winter — does not depend on Patuxent’s captive bred cranes to continue to exist. The flock that migrates to Texas hatches 30 to 40 chicks each year, she said.

But a single catastrophic event, such as a hurricane, disease or chemical spill, could decimate the flock, Kurose said.

“So, creating other wild populations is pretty essential as a backstop to extinction,” she said. “Trump’s proposal makes it difficult to do that.”

Fish and Wildlife Service officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

Though these majestic cranes have had federal protection under the Endangered Species Act for almost 50 years, Kurose said the other three flocks have had difficulty keeping their chicks alive. That’s why the breeding program is essential for their continued existence. The captive birds in Patuxent produce about 29-35 chicks each year, she added.

The additional endangered species threatened under the Trump budget:

The North Atlantic right whale

The Florida grasshopper sparrow

The laurel dace (a small fish that lives in Tennessee’s Cumberland Mountains) The Puerto Rican parrot A tree in Hawaii called the Koki’o The Oahu tree snail The spring-run chinook salmon of the upper Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

Trump’s budget proposal must be approved by Congress.

alex.stuckey@chron.com twitter.com/alexdstuckey