Canadian eggs aid return of whooping cranes to Louisiana

A landmark, bi-national project to reintroduce the endangered whooping crane to its historic marshland habitat in Louisiana has been launched thanks, in part, to the efforts of wildlife experts at the Calgary Zoo, who have carefully fostered dozens of eggs from a captive breeding centre for transport to the U.S. "The number of birds we're putting back out in the wild is very significant," the zoo's senior curator, Bob Peel, told Postmedia News. "We're really proud of it." The planned Gulf Coast colony of cranes represents the most promising initiative in years to help secure the long-term survival of North America's tallest bird. The species had not been seen in the wild in Louisiana for more than 60 years before the first 10 individuals in the new flock were released in late February at the state's White Lake conservation area. The whooping crane's population was down to just 22 in 1941, prompting a joint U.S.-Canada recovery effort that has become a global Yet even after an exceptional breeding season in 2010, there are only about 300 cranes in the world's only wild population, which nests each summer at Wood Buffalo National Park -a UNESCO World Heritage Site straddling the Alberta-Northwest Territories border -before flying 4,000 kilometres to winter feeding grounds in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. There are two other semi-wild populations of "whoopers" in the world, with about 250 birds in total: A non-migratory flock in Florida and a Wisconsin-based migratory flock that has been trained to follow an ultralight aircraft to Florida each winter as part of another unique, Canadian-led recovery project. But the proposed Louisiana flock is considered crucial to eventually removing the species from the North American endangered list because increasing the number of separate, self-sustaining populations -and diversifying the range of whooping crane habitats -is seen as the best defence against a catastrophic collapse of what wildlife officials consider a "highly imperilled'' creature. Conservation efforts have led to the establishment of the zoo's whooping crane breed-ing centre in De Winton, Alta., just south of Calgary, where a Wood Buffalo-derived captive flock of about 20 birds -including one particularly productive pair named Hope and Chinook -is helping to rebuild the species' fragile population. Through natural breeding and artificial insemination, a few dozen fertilized whooping crane eggs are produced annually by the Calgary Zoo's birds -sometimes with the assistance of more plentiful sandhill cranes that are enlisted to sit on and help incubate the unhatched whooping crane chicks. Just a day or two before the baby birds poke their beaks through the shells, Peel and his colleagues at the zoo's conservation centre transport the eggs to a partner facility in Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C. © Copyright (c) The StarPhoenix Read more: http://www.thestarphoenix.com/travel/Canadian+eggs+return+whooping+cranes+Louisiana/4381980/story.html#ixzz1FdzxbeHW