Whooping Crane Conservation Association

Aerial Counts on Aransas Refuge Scheduled

By  Chester McConnell, Whooping Crane Conservation Association

“Aerial survey flights to estimate the whooping crane population on Aransas NWR wintering grounds has been scheduled the week of January 23rd with the office of  Migratory Birds within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to Dan Alonso, Refuge Manager. Alonso also told the Whooping Crane Conservation Association that, “The aerial surveys will consist of 3 consecutive flights to increase the accuracy of the population estimate. We will post an update when biologists process the flight data.”

Whooping crane enthusiasts are elated with the news that census flights will soon begin. As late as last week Aransas officials had been not been able to secure a government certified pilot and aircraft to complete an aerial survey. Fortunately their diligent efforts resulted in getting the problem solved.

Aransas Refuge personnel have been doing their best under very trying circumstances. They drove the refuge roads in automobiles to count all whoopers within their view. On December 22, 2011 they observed 45 whooping cranes using upland and marsh communities. Coupled with one of the worst droughts in many years, red tides in bays along the Texas coast and low numbers of blue crabs (favorite food of whoopers), Aransas officials have had their hands full.

Despite potential threats this winter, whooping cranes continue to thrive and managers are doing everything possible to ensure their continued success. Aransas National Wildlife Refuge officials report that, “This has been a busy month for whooping crane activity since our last report in December 2011. Fortunately, the Refuge has received an additional 0.72 inches of precipitation but salinity levels remain higher than ideal.”  The recent rains that came to Texas caused flooding in some areas but little of that fell on Aransas. Fortunately, temperatures have been higher than normal and whooping cranes have not had to face energy draining cold weather.

Refuge Manager Dan Alonso advised that, “We have continued to help alleviate the low food resources by adding to our prescribed burn totals. This week alone we have burned an additional 4,682 acres of whooping crane habitat. Biologists observed the whooping cranes eating acorns roasted by the fires and are seeing continued usage.”

By Chester McConnell, Whooping Crane Conservation Association

Has the number of whooping cranes currently wintering on Aransas National Wildlife Refuge attained the 300 population level as we have hoped? No one knows. Interested citizens from all over the United States and other countries have been waiting for months to learn if the record number of 300 birds was reached.

Aransas Refuge officials advised the Whooping Crane Conservation Association that, “For reasons beyond our control, we are not able to secure a government certified pilot and aircraft to complete an aerial survey but are working  diligently to alleviate this issue.”  So, as of January 16, 2012 no refuge-wide count of whooping cranes has been done . The Association recognizes the dilemma facing refuge officials and hopefully the problem will be solved soon.

The Association believes that it is essential for aerial surveys to be conducted on Aransas NWR to inventory the total wintering population of whooping cranes. There is no other practical method to gather the data needed. Aerial population surveys help determine the total number of whooping cranes, pair bonds, numbers of immature vs. mature birds, deaths of individuals, territory expansions, habitat utilization, water management needs and other general information to assist in the proper management of these endangered species.

The Aransas refuge staff is doing the best they can to get a partial count of the whoopers. They report that a survey by automobile was conducted on December 22, 2011 throughout the Blackjack peninsula of Aransas Refuge. A total of 45 whooping cranes were observed. Of course this does not represent the total population of whoopers because much of the refuge cannot be observed from roads. During their automobile road survey refuge biologists stated that whooping cranes observed at the refuge have bright white feathers indicating their overall body condition is good.

Despite potential threats this winter, whooping cranes continue to thrive and managers are doing everything possible to ensure their continued success. Aransas National Wildlife Refuge officials report that, “This has been a busy month for whooping crane activity since our last report in December 2011. Fortunately, the Refuge has received an additional 0.72 inches of precipitation but salinity levels remain higher than ideal.”  The recent rains that came to Texas caused flooding in some areas but little of that fell on Aransas.

Refuge Manager Dan Alonso advised that, “We have continued to help alleviate the low food resources by adding to our prescribed burn totals. This week alone we have burned an additional 4,682 acres of whooping crane habitat.  Biologists observed the whooping cranes eating acorns roasted by the fires and are seeing continued usage.”

One whooper chick was found dead from unknown causes on the refuge in December 2011. “The chick carcass was sent to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, WI last month and there were inconclusive findings on the intermittent report. We are awaiting the final report, which will include virology results” according to Vicki Muller, Wildlife Refuge Specialist.

The latest data from Texas Parks and Wildlife officials indicate that red tide is still persisting in the bays along the Texas coast but in lower concentrations. Biologists continue to keep a vigilant watch for signs of illness or disease.

Texas Coastal Update 2011

This summary of Jim Blackburn’s newsletter provides an oversight of several issues concerning the bays and estuaries on the Texas coast and their link to whooping cranes. Hopefully you enjoy this update as well as the poems that are now required reading at the end.

Whooping Crane Litigation

Wow. I just finished a two week trial before Judge Janis Graham Jack in federal District Court in Corpus Christi, and I am still somewhat in a daze. It was the experience and event of a lifetime. I felt like I had been learning and practicing for thirty years for this case. I represent The Aransas Project (TAP), a non-profit group formed to protect San Antonio and Aransas Bays in an attempt to secure freshwater inflows for this important estuary. TAP filed suit against the Commissioners and the Executive Director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the South Texas Watermaster for violating the federal Endangered Species Act. We alleged that the TCEQ allowed so much water to be removed from the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers that the bay salinity was changed beyond what the drought would cause, leading to less food supply for the Whooping Cranes, altering the drinking water supply of the whooping cranes and ultimately causing the death of 23 cranes during the winter of 2008-2009. The trial lasted for about two weeks.

Fresh off the whooping crane litigation, I want to engage in a rambling discourse about Texas water law, an archaic system that must be changed if we are to ever save our bays and estuaries. Texas water law and practice killed Nueces Bay. Of that there is no doubt. Nueces Bay at one time was a flourishing estuary. It is now officially classified by the Bay and Basin Expert Science Team (BBEST) formed under SB 3, as unsound due to inflow alteration, whereas every other estuary on the coast is still considered to be ecologically sound. We have proven that we can kill an estuary. Now is the time to start saving some.

Texas surface water is owned by the State of Texas. Use of state water is authorized by Certificates of Adjudication and permits and by statutory exemption. Although we the people own the water, we don’t act like it. We as citizens need to become as concerned about the protection of our public property as we are about protection of private property.

To read Jim Blackburn’s entire newsletter click on the following file:  https://x37deb.p3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Coastal-Update-2011-Whoper-Law-Suit-Blackburn.docx

Thursday, December 08, 2011Last Update: 3:40 PM PT

Group Can Keep Fighting for Whooping Crane

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas

(CN) – A federal judge refused to rule on claims that Texas is threatening the existence of whooping cranes by allowing diversion of the birds’ freshwater source. In a March 2010 federal complaint, The Aransas Project (TAP) claimed that mismanagement in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the South Texas Watermaster has brought the whooping crane to the brink of extinction, with 23 birds dying in the harsh 2008-09 winter.

By the end of the season, the Guadalupe Basin crane population had allegedly declined to 247. TAP links the loss of birds in the basin to the diversion of freshwater from the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers.

Both sides, as well as intervening defendant Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, moved for summary judgment, but Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack roundly rejected the motions Monday.

Though Jack refused to grant TAP’s motion for partial summary judgment on standing, she also held that the environmentalists’ complaint survived its adversaries’ challenges. Jack devoted a section of her order to determining whether the commission could be held liable for water-diversion activity conducted by third parties. “Plaintiff has alleged that the TCEQ defendants are responsible for water permitting and water diversions from the waterways at issue, and the increased diversions have left less water for the cranes, resulting in a taking,” Jack wrote, abbreviating the commission defendant’s name. “This type of causation is sufficient for an ESA suit challenging governmental regulation,” she concluded.

Regulatory agencies like the TCEQ can be held responsible for harming an endangered species through its regulations, according to the 45-page order. “The court recognizes that ‘a governmental third party pursuant to whose
authority an actor directly exacts a taking of an endangered species may be deemed to have violated the provisions of the ESA,’ specifically the ‘taking’ provision in ESA Section 9,” Jack wrote.”The court concludes that plaintiff provides enough evidence of a ‘taking’ of whooping cranes, both in terms of deaths and non-fatal harm, such as malnourishment, to survive a motion for summary judgment,” she added.

The judge concluded by disagreeing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Burford v. Sun Oil required her to dismiss. That 1943 decision blocked a challenge to oil drilling that the Texas Railroad Commission had approved.

Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Enforcement Division agents have identified two juveniles for their alleged role in the illegal shooting of two whooping cranes in Jefferson Davis Parish.

Read More…

From Plaindealer-sun.com

9/19/2011 2:13:00 PM

What’s a whooping crane worth?

by Neil Case

Two men in Indiana shot and killed a whooping crane and were caught. The whooping crane is an endangered species. As such, it is protected under the Endangered Species Act, a federal law. These men were taken to federal court, found guilty and fined. One dollar each! They were also ordered to pay legal fees and court costs of $550.

A man in Texas shot and killed a whooping crane and was caught and taken to federal court. He was fined $120,000 and sent to jail for six months. Seven men in Kansas, a hunting party, shot and killed two whooping cranes. They were fined a total of $23,586 and given two years probation each.

So is a whooping crane worth one dollar or is it worth $10,000 or more? Someone who kills a bird or other animal officially listed under the Endangered Species Act may be fined up to $100,000 and sentenced to a year in jail. But the whooping crane killed in Indiana was a bird of a “nonessential experimental population.”

These birds are raised at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and the International Crane Foundation. Subsequently they’re taken to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin, taught to follow ultralite aircraft as they learn to fly and led by ultralites to Florida in the fall. It’s an attempt to establish an eastern population of whooping cranes. Raised in captivity, led by ultralite aircraft to a winter grounds in Florida, these birds return on their own to Wisconsin in spring and eventually, it is hoped, they will mate, nest and raise young, then adults and young will migrate to Florida for the winter.

Whooping cranes and other endangered species are protected by law because they are rare.

In addition to being few in number, whooping cranes are striking birds, over four feet tall with a long neck and legs, white with red on the forehead and up onto the top of the head. Once they nested from northern Canada into the northern plains states and in some of the Gulf Coast states. The northern birds migrated south in the fall and all of them wintered along the Gulf Coast.

Today, naturally occurring wild whoopers nest in Wood Buffalo National Park, northwest Canada and winter along the coast of Texas in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Every winter, thousands of people visit the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge hoping to see a whopping crane.

Capitalizing on the number of people who visit Texas to see whooping cranes in winter, the nearby town of Port Aransas has a Whooping Crane Festival every winter. People who attend can hear lectures about whooping cranes, see videos and take a boat ride into the waters of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge where they are almost certain to see whooping cranes and usually one or more of their families, including a pair of adults and an immature bird.

A federal judge in Indiana assigned a value of one dollar to a whooping crane. A federal judge in Texas assigned a value of $10,000 and a judge in Kansas assigned an even higher value. Motel owners, restaurant owners, and souvenir shop owners in Port Aransas, Texas undoubtedly agree with the higher assessments since their businesses flourish in winter when visitors come to the area to see whooping cranes. There are other people, I’m sure, who wouldn’t care if the whooping crane became extinct.

So what is a whooping crane worth? Carrying the question further, what are the swallows and warblers feeding on insects worth, the sparrows and finches eating and scattering seeds, vultures providing roadside sanitation, hummingbirds pollinating flowers, hawks preying on mice and other small animals, robins eating wild cherries and passing the seeds, blue jays burying acorns? Aside form such practical considerations, what’s it worth just to be able to see a whooping crane or any other bird?

The Whooping Crane Conservations Association   whoopingcrane.com    attempts to assist in the education of hunters to help prevent the killing of endangered species such as the whooping crane. We are attaching an “identification” aide prepared by the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries department to further assist hunters in identification. The Louisiana article includes photos of large birds similar to whooping cranes. Some are illegal to hunt while others are legal. Hunters need to know the difference. If you are a hunter and are not certain of the identification of the bird you are aiming at, please don’t shoot. Better safe than sorry. Click on the following link:

http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/pagehunting/34617-whooping-crane-identification-fact-sheet/whooping_crane_identification_fact_sheet_final.pdf

For even more identification help, go to the Whooping Crane Conservation Association web site at        https://whoopingcrane.com/whooper-identification/

See earlier posts:

Vast wind energy proposal could kill endangered birds

Wind Farms and Whooping Cranes

Opportunity to provide your comments to:

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, Fish and Wildlife Service concerning effects of wind turbines on Whooping Cranes.

Draft Environmental Impact Statement and Habitat Conservation Plan for Commercial Wind Energy Developments Within Nine States

AGENCY: Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior.

ACTION: Notice of intent; announcement of public scoping meetings; request for comments.

———————————————————————–

SUMMARY: We, the Fish and Wildlife Service, as lead agency advise the public that we intend to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) on a proposed application, including a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), for an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended. The potential ITP would include federally listed and candidate species within portions of nine states (North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas).

The activities covered by a potential ITP would include regional-level construction, operation, and maintenance associated with multiple commercial wind energy facilities. The planning partners are currently considering, for inclusion in the HCP, certain species listed as federally threatened or endangered, or having the potential to become listed during the life of the HCP, and having some likelihood of being taken by the applicant’s activities within the proposed permit area. The intended effect of this notice is to gather information from the public to develop and analyze the effects of the potential issuance of an ITP that would facilitate wind energy development within the planning area, while minimizing incidental take and mitigating the effects of any incidental take to the maximum extent practicable.

We provide this notice to (1) Describe the proposed action; (2) advise other Federal and state agencies, potentially affected tribal interests, and the public of our intent to prepare an EIS; (3) announce the initiation of a 90-day public scoping period; and (4) obtain suggestions and information on the scope of issues and possible alternatives to be included in the EIS.

Click on the following for the total Federal Register Announcement

The development of wind farms is occurring at a rapid pace in the Central Flyway with many of the best wind sites located in the whooping crane migration corridor. Tom Stehn, Whooping Crane Coordinator, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) advised the Whooping Crane Conservation Association (WCCA) that multiple wind farms have already been built with more planned. Stehn stated, “It is important to analyze the potential impact of literally tens of thousands of wind turbines that may be placed in the whooping crane migration corridor in the coming years.      

Current estimates are that 2,705 turbines are operational at 40 wind farms in the U. S. whooping crane migration corridor.  The average wind development project consists of 57 turbines (data generated by the Great Plains Wind Energy Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) in March, 2011).      

The majority of wind farms do not require federal permits and thus there is no nexus for the companies to consult with USFWS under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, the projects must avoid “take” of endangered species under Section 9 of the ESA. USFWS’ Stehn advised that: “For the totality of wind energy development, there is a very definite issue of “take”.  Wind farms have the potential to directly kill whooping cranes from the turbines themselves or associated power line development, or could result in “take” of hundreds of square miles of migration stopover habitat if whooping cranes tend to avoid wind farms.”  The National Academy of Science Report in 2004 on Platte River endangered species confirmed unequivocally the threat to whooping cranes if migration habitat is lost.      

Early on in discussions with wind companies, USFWS talked of two possible scenarios for offsetting anticipated impacts of wind farms.  These were to set aside whooping crane migration stopover habitat in perpetuity to counter potential loss of habitat from wind farm construction, as well as to mark new power lines, as well as some existing power lines to offset the threat of whooping cranes colliding with a wind turbine or power lines built to support wind development.      

According to Stehn: “At the urging of USFWS at meetings held in Denver and Houston as well as regular conference calls, 19 of the largest wind development companies joined together to work on endangered species issues throughout the whooping crane migration corridor in the U.S.  With the support of the State of Oklahoma, the industry group received a grant of $1,080,990 to develop a landscape level, multi-species HCP that would include the lesser prairie chicken.  The grant was awarded through the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund under the HCP Planning Assistance Program. The HCP will be designed to avoid and minimize impacts to endangered and threatened species associated with wind energy development.”        

This multi-species HCP will be the first of its kind to involve alternative fuel sources while protecting endangered species.  In a meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma in November, 2010, four species were added to the HCP (Sprague’s pipit, mountain plover, piping plover and interior least tern), joining the whooping crane and lesser prairie chicken.  An additional meeting was held in March, 2011 in Albuquerque.  It does appear that this industry group will agree to have the wintering grounds of the whooping cranes as off- limits to wind energy development.  However, projects in the migration corridor are currently being built and are not waiting for this HCP to be completed.      

In 2010, monitoring for cranes was done at the Titan I wind facility in South Dakota.  In the spring, a group of 5 whooping cranes spent 3 days approximately 2 miles from the project.  The closest they were ever on the ground from a turbine was 1.2 miles.  When they resumed migration, the nearest turbine was shut down in a very rapid response as the monitor called in that the cranes were flying.  The cranes passed by that turbine at a distance of about one-half mile.  In the fall, two groups of whooping cranes (2+1 and 2) flew within 0.5 and 0.3 miles from an operating turbine but did not seem to alter their flight behavior.       

Research on sandhill cranes in west Texas done by Laura Navarrete of Texas Tech University documented two observed instances of cranes being killed by wind turbine blades.  Although sandhill cranes definitely avoided wind farms, she also observed accommodation with cranes foraging right at the base of turbines.  Research done by U.S. Geological Survey at Horicon NWR in Wisconsin also showed some avoidance by sandhill cranes from wind farms.

WCCA article based on communications with Tom Stehn, USFWS

By Laura Zuckerman
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters)| Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:13pm EDT

The Obama administration is evaluating a plan to allow a 200-mile corridor for wind energy development from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico that would allow for killing endangered whooping cranes.

The government’s environmental review will consider a permit sought by 19 energy developers that would permit turbines and transmission lines on non-federal lands in nine states from Montana to the Texas coast, overlapping with the migratory route of the cranes.

The permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would allow the projects to “take” an unspecified number of endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act, “take” is defined as killing or injuring an endangered species

The government can issue permits to kill or injure listed species with no penalties or risks of lawsuits to developers who agree to craft conservation plans. According to federal officials, the large scale of the review will help streamline the permitting process by lumping many projects into a single study.

The Obama Administration has been working to speed development of renewable energy projects by improving coordination among various state and federal agencies. Environmentalists, however, say the “fast track” process results in inadequate environmental reviews.

The Administration’s latest wind energy proposal raises concerns among wildlife advocates because the developments would overlap with habitat imperiled birds such as whooping cranes rely on, including the Central Flyway, a migratory path that cuts through North America’s midsection between the Arctic and the Tropics.

The leading cause of death for the nation’s last historic population of whooping cranes, which stand at 5 feet and have a wingspan of more than 7 feet, is overhead utility lines, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Conservationists say the Central Flyway’s population of 280 cranes — which make a refueling stop along Platte River in Nebraska along with tens of thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese — would suffer with the loss of just a single adult breeding bird.

‘RAREST OF BIRDS’

“I can hardly imagine what the government is thinking. Whooping cranes are the rarest of all the cranes, the rarest of American birds,” said Paul Johnsgard, author of several books on the cranes and professor emeritus of ornithology at the University of Nebraska.

Fish & Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said wind energy is crucial to the nation’s future economic and environmental security, which is why the agency is paving the way for a renewable energy project with an undetermined number of wind turbines generating an unidentified amount of electricity along the 200-mile-wide corridor.

“We will do our part to facilitate development of wind energy resources, while ensuring that they are sited and designed in ways that minimize and avoid negative impacts to fish and wildlife,” he said in a statement.

Whooping cranes, North America’s tallest bird, once numbered in the tens of thousands before hunting and habitat loss caused their populations to plummet to 16 in the 1930s.

The cranes, which annually migrate thousands of miles from wintering grounds in coastal Texas to breeding and nesting areas in Alberta, Canada, were at the forefront of an emerging wildlife conservation movement in the 1960s that gave rise to a series of landmark laws aimed at preventing extinctions of rare and declining animals.
Whooping cranes were among the first creatures added to an early version of the Endangered Species Act in 1967.

Few other populations of whooping cranes exist in the United States, with an introduced flock in central Florida that does not migrate and a fledging group in Wisconsin that biologists have trained to fly to the winter refuge of Florida by following ultralight aircraft.

Attempts to establish crane populations elsewhere, including Idaho and Colorado, have failed.

Government scientists have not yet determined how many whooping cranes, other threatened and endangered birds and imperiled bats would be killed or otherwise harmed because of the wind project, said Amelia Orton-Palmer, conservation planner with the service.

“It’s so early in the process we won’t begin to speculate on what that might be,” she said.