News briefs: Dates & updates

Look here, at the end of every week, for a collection of short news items and links to stories, events, and issues regarding Wisconsin’s whooping cranes, conservation issues, get-outdoors opportunities, and, perhaps other nature-based happenings.

Nesting Updates

Impatient for news of whooping crane chicks hatching, The Badger & the Whooping Crane is obsessively checking the Facebook pages of the International Crane Foundation, Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, and others.

Eggs are incubating in captive populations and wild whoopers are incubating their own eggs on nests in Wisconsin. The only news, though for today, is the not-unexpected report from Louisiana that a nest built and eggs incubated by one 3-year-old pair (in the new Louisiana Non-migrating Flock) has, after a month, been determined to hold infertile eggs. The fact that the very young pair was able to produce eggs and incubate them faithfully for the full month it would take for a chick to hatch, is still a fact to celebrate.

Dates to Save

Take your mom to the International Crane Foundation Sunday for Mother’s Day. She’ll get in for free! It’s regular price  ($9.50 for adults; $5 for children, 6 – 17) if you’re not somebody’s mom . . . . Another special day is planned at ICF for Endangered Species Day, Saturday, May 17; you’ll get all the details about ICF’s big role in helping bring the Whooping Crane species back from the brink of extinction, and THEN help REintroduce whoopers into the wild right here in Wisconsin . . . .

A Grey-Crowned Crane, one of the 15 species of cranes you will meet at An Evening with the Cranes at ICF in Baraboo – or anytime you visit! (Photo courtesy ICF)

And yet another special ICF event to put on your calendar: Buy your ticket ($50 per member, $60 non-members) and reserve your space at An Evening with The Cranes, Saturday, June 21st, from 5 to 8 p.m. at ICF in Baraboo.  You’ll meet the dedicated people who make ICF a worldwide leader in conservation today, and you’ll enjoy a gourmet dinner, craft beers, and wines from around the world (just like the cranes)!

Doesn’t the last Saturday in June sound like the perfect night to plan a backyard campout? That must have been what the National Wildlife Federation was thinking when they picked June 28th for the 10th annual Great American Backyard Campout. Get outside in your favorite backyard or park and enjoy the wonders of the natural world, and know that you’re helping to keep it wonderful. The NWF board of director’s and other NWF friends will give $2 for everyone who is out camping. The money goes to NWF’s wildlife conservation fund.

American Wetlands Month Updates

Do you own a little lakeshore property? Or know someone who does? Here is an opportunity to learn about the “living shoreline” and erosion control practices that protect the natural structure and function of shorelines through the strategic placing of such materials as native plants, sand, and stone. In celebration of American Wetlands Month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is offering this free webinar, “Living Shorelines – Types , Tools and Techniques,” online Wednesday, May 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. . . . .Here is a report from the Ashland Daily Press on the presentation that Wisconsin Wetlands Association’s Executive Director Tracy Hames is giving around the state on the role of wetlands in the Penokee Hills in northern Wisconsin. This particular presentation, which more than 70 people attended in two sessions in the Town of Morse last Friday, and the Town of Delta on Saturday, was sponsored by the Bad River Watershed Association.

Egg Harbor: Eco-Town!

Egg Harbor in Door County has become the first municipality in that tourist-rich region to become a certified Eco-Municipality. It joins 24 other municipalities and 4 counties in Wisconsin that have received this certification. This is a program that began in Sweden in 1983. In 2005 Washburn, WI became the first American city to adopt the eco-municipality principles of reducing a community’s “encroachment on nature” while “meeting human needs fairly and efficiently.” Today Wisconsin has more eco-municipalities than any other state in the country.

 

 

Whooping Cranes Sitting on Nests!

Coming soon to the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership: newly-hatched crane chicks!

The eggs are being incubated (gathered from whooping cranes in the captive populations at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the International Crane Foundation); add to that the good news that paired whooping cranes in the wild are sitting on nests in both Louisiana and Wisconsin. Those who work professionally on behalf of the whooping crane species, and those who just love them from afar – all are collectively holding their breath, waiting to see what the immediate future for whooping cranes is going to look like. Will the coming year be filled with more hopes than worries? Or the other way ’round?

Whooping Crane eggs in incubators (Photo courtesy Patuxent National Wildlife Research Center)

For starters, the number of chicks hatched in captivity, then costume-reared, will once again be split among 3 different release programs: a group that will be trained to fly with the ultralights of Operation Migration, another group for Direct Autumn Release, and a third group that will be released with the new non-migrating flock in Louisiana. While there is always the hope for a bountiful crop of chicks to be shared by all three programs, there is also the real possibility that each program will have to settle for less than the hoped-for number of chicks.

The true hope for WCEP is represented by those cranes building nests in the wild – they’re the key to WCEP’s main goal of establishing a new, self-sustaining flock of wild whooping cranes. They are also the cause of so much of the breath-holding and anxiety regarding the breeding season for the Eastern Migratory Population of whoopers.

Over the years, the EMP whooping cranes have engaged in an impressive amount of nest-building in Wisconsin, but with little to show for it. According to the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, only 29 chicks have been hatched from the more than 100 nests built since 2005, and few of those hatched chicks have survived. The WCEP partners are engaged in various studies, including a recent effort at Bti suppression of black flies (in 2011 and 2012) which have been seen harassing the nesting cranes, and a just-launched 3-year intensive study of the whooping cranes’ nesting habits at Necedah NWR.

Look closely for the two eggs on the whooper nest! (Photo courtesy, international Crane Foundation)

Hopefully, successful breeding seasons will soon result, as the WCEP partners discover more answers. I asked WCEP co-chair, Peter Fasbender, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officer based in northeastern Wisconsin, about this, and he told me, via email:

“Wisconsin whooping cranes are doing some things well. Their survival rate is good. Their migration patterns are well-established in both spring and fall. They appear to arrive back in breeding territory in good physical condition as indicated by what appears to be normal courtship, breeding, and nesting habits.”

Then he added: “Here is where whooping cranes begin to have issues. While many are successful in laying eggs and initiating incubation, very few make it to egg-hatching phase. Black fly emergence during the incubation phase contributes to failure in this area, but our study has shown this is only part of the problem.”

Peter Fasbender had more to say about nest failure, and what WCEP is doing this year, instead of more black fly suppression. The Badger and the Whooping Crane will cover this and include more information about the pesky black flies, in a second post about the 2014 nesting season next week.

I’d be remiss, though, not to mention right now two especially newsworthy nests that are being watched for chick hatchings: in Louisiana, the newly reintroduced non-migratory flock has a pair of 3-year-olds that are sitting on a nest with two eggs. The prospective crane parents are young to successfully raise a chick, and it’s possible that the eggs are not fertile. But the nest was first observed in late March, so if a chick is to hatch from it, there will be headlines about this very soon.

Whooping crane pair with a tiny chick on the nest. (Photo couresty Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership)

And in Wisconsin, another pair of 3-year-old cranes appears to have a nest in the White River Marsh release area. Operation Migration announced it earlier this week on their Facebook page. The project to train young chicks to fly with the ultralights of Operation Migration was moved from Necedah NWR to this release area in 2011, and these cranes are from the first class trained in this new location. The nest at White River Marsh is a “first,” and a very exciting development for the 2014 breeding season!

 

 

 

Ask the Experts – The Whooping Crane Edition

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held an online chat about whooping crane migration and other related issues last week. It took place at noon, October 31st.

It was one of the DNR’s series of Ask The Experts online events, where various DNR staff take part in discussions and answer questions about their topic of expertise. There have been sessions on walleye fishing, deer hunting, well water testing, beach monitoring, and so many other topics.

For the Whooping Crane version of Ask The Experts, Davin Lopez – the DNR’s whooping crane coordinator, was joined by 2 other partners in the whooping crane reintroduction efforts in Wisconsin. Joan Garland, outreach coordinator for the International Crane Foundation, and Heather Ray, associate director of development for Operation Migration, joined Davin in typing back answers to the questions almost as fast as we online chatterers submitted them.

Midway through the chat we learned that there were approximately 100 who were participating! As a participant you have no idea that you are part of such a large virtual audience.

Among the many dozens of questions that were asked, the topic that attracted the most attention – at least 12 questions and comments – was concerned with treatments to reduce the Black fly population (which seems to contribute to the cranes abandoning nests at breeding time) at Necedah NWR. I’ll add a separate post about that, but first, here is a list of some of the topics touched on:

– Although the ultralight-led migration began for this year’s crop of new cranes on October 2nd, there have been no reports of “on migration” sightings of any of the 100-plus adult whooping cranes in Wisconsin. Heather Ray said that generally they don’t begin migration before November.

– She also said that the ultralight migration flights begin with short flights of 5 to 20 miles in distance and gradually expand to 50 and 60 mile flights, as the birds gain experience and stamina.

Efforts to train whooping cranes to migrate with ultralights begins when the colts are very young.

– The goal of the whooping crane re-introduction campaign in Wisconsin (technically the campaign is for the entire Eastern half of North America, but Wisconsin is key, as the northern terminus of the flyway that is being established) is 100 individual birds (that goal is within reach) and 25 successful breeding pairs (not even close); actually, Davin Lopez called this “a very rough goal . . . what we need is a self sustaining, growing population.”

– Ray reported that there were 20 breeding pair in Wisconsin in 2013. Unfortunately only 3 chicks hatched from these nests, and only one has survived to fledge. (The survivor is designated #W3-13 – the 3rd chick hatched in the wild in 2013 – and will be migrating south with its parents: #9 from 2003, and #3 from 2004).

– Except for 3 surviving wild chicks (the 2013 survivor, and #w1-06, and #w3-10) all of Wisconsin’s wild whooping cranes were hatched from eggs produced each year by the captive populations at ICF and Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. Ray said that there are generally 30 and 40 eggs available each year from these sources, and they are split 50/50 between Wisconsin and the new <strong>Louisiana Non-migrating flock; efforts to establish this were launched in 2011.

– One participant commented about a Sandhill Crane hunt, which has been rumored for Wisconsin. He suggested that it would be hard for hunters to distinguish between young whooping crane colts and Sandhills. Joan Garland referred him to a fact sheet at the International Crane Foundation website that addresses the hunting proposal.

– As the chat closed, another guest added this personal note: “Thanks to a school presentation by Joan, my son is hooked on the whooping crane and he wants to be a biologist when he grows up!”

How lucky, that courtesy of the International Crane foundation, I just happen to have a picture of Joan making such a presentation! And here it is:

International Crane Foundation’s Joan Garland gives a school presentation.

[Photo credits: Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, and the International Crane Foundation.]