<< Back 11/6/02 The Naturalist's Corner By Don Hendershot I have to admit, I never saw the movie “Fly Away Home.” I know the story line: A father and his daughter use ultralight aircraft to lead a flock of Canada geese on migration. The movie is based on a true story. The first official human-led migration occurred in 1993 when two Canadians, Bill Lishman and Joseph Duff, led 18 Canada geese on a 400-mile fall migration from Port Perry, Ontario, to Warrenton, Va. The two pilots partnered in 1994 to create Operation Migration Inc., a nonprofit organization to raise funds to continue their efforts to determine if human-led migrations might be a viable method to help in the restoration of threatened and endangered species. In 1994 and ‘95 the two duplicated the feat with larger flocks and over a greater distance, leading the Canadas for 800 miles to Tom Yawkey Wildlife Preserve in South Carolina. In 1997, Operation Migration, working with the Whooping Crane Recovery Team and Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, led sandhill cranes from Ontario to Virginia. The team got a boost in the spring of ‘98 when the cranes returned, on their own. There was still a glitch to work out, however. The intense training with the fledgling sandhills to convince them to follow the ultralights had left them imprinted on humans. The returning migrants showed no fear of humans, a trait that would not serve wild birds well. Those birds were removed from the flyway and the team went to work to solve the dilemma. The crane class of ‘98 was trained using different protocol. Trainers wore costumes and no talking was allowed in the proximity of the birds. These birds were led to the Tom Yawkey Preserve in South Carolina. When they returned to Ontario the next year they exhibited the same caution towards humans as wild-reared birds. With these successes as a springboard, a consortium of groups and individuals have banded together in an effort to reintroduce whooping cranes in eastern North America. The group is working under the auspices of The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP) and include Operation Migration, Inc., The Canada/US Whooping Crane Recovery Team, U.S. Fish & Wildlife, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the International Crane Foundation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Whooping Cranes Over Tennessee and other national, state and local agencies and organizations. The whooping crane is one of the most recognized and rarest endangered species in the country. The only remaining wild flock numbers around 180 birds. This flock, which dwindled to 15 birds in 1941, nests in Wood Buffalo National Park along the border of Alberta and the Northwest Territories of Canada and winters in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, on the Gulf coast of Texas. The whooper, at five feet, is the tallest bird in North America. It can weigh as much as 16 pounds and has a wingspan of seven to eight feet. The adult is pure white with black wing tips, black legs, black facial markings and a patch of red skin on its head. The juvenile is largely white, with reddish feathers scattered about the body and a reddish neck and head. Fossilized records of whoopers date back to the Pleistocene Epoch and reveal a much larger geographic range extending from Canada to Mexico and from Utah to the Atlantic coast. An estimated 1,400 whooping cranes were in existence in 1865. Only two small flocks remained in 1938. The one that winters in Aransas and a non-migratory flock in southwestern Louisiana. Habitat destruction, hunting and collection by hobbyists and museums nearly wiped out the whooping crane. A storm, in 1940, extirpated the resident Louisiana flock, leaving only the one, wild flock. The whooping crane was listed as endangered in 1967. The recovery plan for the crane calls for two additional flocks, consisting of 25 breeding pairs to be established before the whooper can be downgraded from endangered to threatened. These flocks are to be established in areas where contact with the existing wild flock is unlikely to occur. In October of 2001, Operation Migration led eight costume-reared whooping cranes from Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin into the sky, bound for Chassahowitzka National Refuge along Florida’s Gulf coast about 70 miles north of Tampa. Fifty days and more than 1,200 miles later, the ultralight and seven cranes landed at Chassahowitzka. One crane was lost during migration and two of the young whoopers were lost to predation by bobcats over the winter but the other five returned to Necedah in the spring of 2002. This October, 17 whoopers lifted off behind Operation Migration’s ultralights and headed south. One young crane has been lost this year but as of Nov. 3 the remaining 16 and their intrepid ultralight guides were windbound in Benton County Indiana. The southerly migration route takes the cranes through parts of seven states (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida). The cranes will pass just west of WNC, near Chattanooga, Tenn. To keep abreast of the whoopers’ progress log on to www.bringbackthecranes.org. (Don Hendershot can be reached at don@smokymountainnews.com)