Whooping Cranes

Tell me what you think of when I say, Midwest. Exotic animals? Five foot tall birds with a wingspan of seven and a half feet flying overhead? That are native to the Midwest? That perform elaborate courtship rituals? I thought not.

You came close to being right.  As recently as 1941 there were only 15 whooping cranes left in the world. All current whooping cranes descend from these 15 birds. The population is still very small and highly endangered even as it grows.

The main flock, about 250 - 300 birds, migrate between a wildlife preserve in Texas (Aransas Wildlife Refuge near Corpus Christie) and northern Alberta, Canada (Wood Buffalo National Park), where they breed. In the Spring and Fall they cross 2,500 miles to get to their summer and winter homes. In the winter, in Texas, they fill up on crustaceans, especially blue crabs, enough to prepare them to migrate and give birth to the next generation. During migration they eat insects and other animal protein when the can, though they will make do with grain from agricultural fields if necessary. In summer they eat seafood, make nests in swamps and raise their young. They lay two eggs a season. Usually, only one survives.

Like other large predators, whooping cranes were never numerous. Before Europeans colonized the Midwest there were about 2000 whooping cranes according to the latest estimates. They lived across the American Midwest, north into Canada. Agriculture took away almost all of their preferred habitat. Hunters who sold their feathers for fashionable hats decimated a large part of the population. Interestingly, the other major cause of their near extinction was the collection of their eggs for scientific research.

This flock, the Western flock, is the original, and the only truly wild flock in the world. Scientists worked and work hard to establish other flocks in order not to put all the whooping crane's eggs in one basket, so to speak. They've tried techniques from fostering whooping crane eggs with sandhill crane mothers to using light planes to establish new migration routes. As a result there's an eastern flock that migrates between Florida and Wisconsin and a few non-migratory flocks, but none of these are self-sustaining yet. Some are also in captivity (zoos, etc.). Nevertheless, the Western flock of about 279 birds is the only self-sustaining, truly wild flock in the world. That small number, all migrating at around the same time, is vulnerable and could easily be wiped out by one oil spill.

Unfortunately, the route of the proposed KXL pipeline follows the migratory path of the Western flock from one end to the other. The endpoint of the proposed pipeline route is across Texas at Port Arthur, but the most of the rest is on the migration path. In Canada the same. Currently, their biggest cause of premature death is collisions with power lines.If the KXL pipeline was to be built, there would necessarily be hundreds of miles of pipeline specifically for the pipeline, to power pumping stations. In Alberta the birds travel up the Athabasca River, stopping to rest at Ft. McMurray (ground zero for tar sands extraction) before continuing to their breeding sites, downstream from tar sands mining operations. In addition to the high possibility of spills along their migration route, they are in danger from ordinary tar sands operations. 

These birds don't use the oil. How much do they have to sacrifice for our unwillingness to change our habits? How much are their lives worth? The answer is in our hands.

Possum