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| Whooping cranes spotted in South Dakota. |
On April 2, a flock of 16 whooping cranes were spotted near the Crow Lake Wind Project in South Dakota. The birds were spotted by one of the wind technicians. Once the cranes were spotted, about three dozen wind towers were immediately shut down. For almost the entire month of April, there were cranes in the area. It was a combination of some leaving, some arriving and some remaining. As the birds moved around the area, towers were shut down as needed.
According to Kevin Tschosik, Basin Electric manager of distributed generation, any wind turbines within a two-mile radius of a crane sighting must be immediately shut down. “During the initial sighting, we shut down 37 of the 108 towers in the park,” he said. “As the birds were moving through the area during the month, various towers were shut down within the two-mile radius and the entire park was shut down a couple of times.”
During the spring and fall whooping crane migration seasons, Basin Electric hires biologists to patrol the Crow Lake wind park, searching for whooping cranes. Tschosik said the Crow Lake wind park boundaries encompass about 35,000 acres, and wind technicians also are on the lookout for cranes. The whooping crane spring migration season begins April 1 and continues through May 15. The fall season begins Sept. 10 and continues through Oct. 31. He said all of the wind technicians at all of Basin Electric’s wind parks participate in annual training to spot and identify whooping cranes.
“This is an example of where our training paid off, and we followed proper procedures to prevent any possibility of injuring a whooping crane due to it flying into a moving turbine blade,” Tschosik said. “The cranes that were observed were spotted by one of our wind technicians who made the call to dispatch and the park manager to start shutting down the towers.”
While the cranes were in the area, the biologists carefully watched and charted their movements from afar taking exceptional care to not spook or harass them, Tschosik said. In addition, regular updates were provided to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep them informed of the ongoing bird observations and tower shutdowns.
Whooping cranes are one of the rarest birds in the world with a total population of approximately 600 individuals, with less than 300 in the migratory flock that travels through South Dakota. After being pushed to the brink of extinction by unregulated hunting and loss of habitat to just 21 wild and two captive whooping cranes by 1941, conservation efforts have led to a limited recovery. As of 2011, there are an estimated 437 birds in the wild and more than 165 in captivity. The whooping cranes that travel through South Dakota migrate from wintering grounds along the gulf coast of Texas to the Wood Buffalo National Park located in Alberta and the Northwest Territories of Canada.
