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.

 

 

Annual Midwest Crane Count is Saturday

The volunteers – about 2,000 expected across the Upper Midwest – are ready. They’ve met with their county’s Crane Count coordinators to  review the basics of visually identifying cranes, and how to identify them by sound as well. They’ve received maps of their counties, and the individual sites they will monitor, and Saturday morning, from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. the 39th Annual Midwest Crane Count will once again take to the fields and wetlands of Wisconsin, and nearly 200 sites in adjacent states, to report back to us on the status of the plentiful sandhill crane species in our midst.

A gathering of sandhill cranes (image courtesy of International Crane Foundation)

No doubt, many of the reports will echo the scenario that is found in Wisconsin’s Brown County. I talked with Mark Payne, a park ranger at the Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary, who has served as Brown County’s Midwest Crane Count Coordinator since 1997. When he was new on the job he remembers the annual count yielding about a dozen sandhill cranes, predictably, every year.

But that number began to climb, he said, often by big leaps, beginning in 2000. That year 70 sandhill cranes were counted in Brown County. In 2009 the count was up to 286 cranes, and 324 were recorded last year. Interestingly, Mark also dug out some historical data – Brown County first joined the crane count in 1981, before his time on the job. That first year only 4 sandhill cranes were counted here, said Mark.

Last week, Mark met with the group of observers that he coordinates; about 60 to 70% of the group are repeat crane counters, he estimated, so it’s an easy orientation session. They will be monitoring at 40 sites in Brown County. He said they are encouraged to get familiar with their sites beforehand, in daylight (some individuals will monitor more than one) so they know, when they arrive in the dark at 5:30 Saturday morning, where the best observation points are. “Generally they look for a hill or a high spot where they can pull off the road and get out of their car to observe.”

The Crane Count tradition began in 1976 on a small-scale when the then 5-year old International Crane Foundation decided to survey Columbia County (to the east of Baraboo where ICF is located) in search of sandhill crane activity, and to study their ecology. Two years later Crane Count covered 5 Wisconsin counties, and in 1981 it partnered with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association and expanded widely through the state.

A sandhill crane pair; from the files of the International Crane Foundation.

According the ICF, “The hopes of expanding Crane Count were to enhance wetland protection (Wisconsin currently retains about half of its historic wetlands) by promoting awareness, document areas where cranes were known to occur, and begin documenting the size of the crane population.” In 1994 it expanded into Minnesota and Michigan, and soon after into Illinois, then Iowa, officially becoming the Annual Midwest Sandhill Crane Count. In 2011 Indiana was added to the list.

Every year since 2000 at least 10,000 sandhill cranes, and often more, have been counted. “People know more about them, and seem to care more about the cranes now,” said Mark Payne. “I see more interest in helping to preserve habitat and wetlands.”