ANDERSON CITY — Sometimes you just need a little guidance.
At least that’s what the members of Operation Migration are hoping as they try to return the whooping crane from the brink of extinction.
Speaking by phone during an unscheduled layover in Anderson City, Beverly Paulan, the team’s supervisor of field operations, said the whooping crane was extinct in the wild of the American Midwest when Operation Migration started working with them six years ago. Now, birds raised in captivity are taught to fly the migratory route of their ancestors by following four ultralight aircraft.
“In essence, we’re acting like Mama Crane,” Paulan said.
Paulan said this year’s flock featured the first whooping crane chick born in the Midwest in a hundred years. Cranes from a previous year’s flock successfully hatched a fledgeling, and the family has already successfully migrated to Florida.
The route begins at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin, where the cranes were released from captivity and where the flock spends the summer. The flock left there Oct. 5 en route to their winter habitat, Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge, near Crystal River, Fla.
“We were hoping to be there two weeks ago,” Paulan said, “but we kept running into weather delays.”
The team was stuck four days in Dawson because of fog and rough winds, she said. The four pilots led the birds aloft Friday morning but made it only 33 miles before they had to set down in a field near Anderson City. Most days the birds can fly 50 to 100 miles, depending on winds.
The team planned to take off at first light this morning, if the weather permits. Their arrival in Chassahowitzka is also dependent upon the weather — and the birds.
“[The] birds didn’t want to go [Friday],” Paulan said. “When the birds stop, we stop.”
When summer rolls around, the cranes remember their way back to Wisconsin and can fly north unaided, she said.
Operation Migration grew from two men’s successful effort in 1994 to guide Canada geese to their winter grounds, a migration depicted in the film “Fly Away Home.” After that, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tried the same trick on sand hill cranes, also with success. Then they went for the gold: saving the most famous endangered bird in North America, the whooping crane.
It is believed that 1,400 whooping cranes existed in 1860, according to Operation Migration’s Web site. Due to both hunting and habitat destruction, the last migrating flock contained only 15 birds in 1941. That wild flock had reached 180 birds by 1999. It summers in Canada and winters in Texas.
Scientists of the Whooping Crane Recovery Team started a nonmigratory flock of whooping cranes in Florida in 1993, and in 1999 they began the creation of a migratory flock at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. This is their sixth migration.
The flock that landed in Worth County Friday contains 58 birds from previous years plus 18 making their maiden trip, Paulan said. The Whooping Crane Recovery Team believes the flock can be self-sustaining when it reaches 125 birds, she said.
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