Settling in
Whooping cranes finally nesting in Texas again
Not since the late 1800s have whooping cranes nested in Texas — until now.
A pair of the magnificent birds are nesting in Chambers County on private land about 65 miles east of Houston off Interstate 10. They’re not part of the migratory flock from the Aransas National
Wildlife Refuge but are instead from of an introduced, nonmigratory flock at Louisiana’s White Lake Conservation Area.
Think about it. A pair of whooping cranes nesting in Texas for the first time in perhaps 140 years. The Chambers County landowner, who will remain anonymous so the nest is not disturbed, told me the cranes have been nesting on his property for the past four years. (Birders who found out about the cranes this year flocked to the nesting site.)
The majestic snow-white cranes numbered more than 1,400 birds after the Civil War; they ranged from the Arctic down through North America and Mexico. They nested mostly in prairie marshlands throughout the Great Plains.
They migrated from the Great Plains
to winter homes on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, while a nonmigratory population resided in southwestern Louisiana. But the cranes rapidly declined in the late 19th century as breeding grounds were converted to agriculture and as hunters shot them.
In 1937, a remnant population of about 15 to 18 migratory whooping cranes arrived at the Aransas refuge from nesting grounds at Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The nonmigratory flock in Louisiana had died out by 1950.
Meanwhile, massive recovery efforts were underway to restore the crane population. Those efforts included captive breeding programs to reestablish the birds in Florida and Louisiana, plus “training” captive-bred birds to migrate to Florida from restored breeding grounds in Wisconsin.
Most urgent was the restoration of a viable population of the only self-sustaining population of whooping cranes that migrate between Northwest Canada and the Aransas refuge. While their population reached 506 birds this past winter, a thousand birds would be self-sustaining.
But restoration depends on the Aransas refuge’s brackish marsh, where the cranes must fatten up on blue crabs for reproductive capability on breeding grounds. Potential disasters, such as oil spills and hurricanes, could alter the habitat and reduce the crabs, threatening the cranes’ vitality.
In his book “A Haven in the Sun,” B.C. Robinson wrote, “We should not necessarily call the saga of the whooping crane recovery a ‘success story,’ for the crane’s survival is far from over.”