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Current Status:

The whooping crane continues to be threatened by the possibility of a hurricane or accidental contaminant spill on its Texas coast wintering grounds. Other threats include disease, intentional or accidental shooting, and the loss of coastal habitat to erosion and land development.

Achievements:

The whooping crane has responded favorably to management activities in Texas and elsewhere. The wintering population is expected to grow to about 145 birds by December 1992, compared to 132 in December 1991. Prescribed burning of 2,500 acres on the Aransas and Matagorda Island Refuge Complex provides the birds access to a variety of upland foods. For the fourth year, volunteers, Fish and Wildlife Service employees, and representatives from other agencies placed sandbags along eroding marshlands that are critical habitat for the cranes. This year's efforts protected half a mile of critical habitat from erosion by barge wakes. Dredge spoil was used to create 15 acres of marsh. Planted with aquatic plants, these marshlands were first used by a whooping crane in January 1992.

Current Recovery Needs:

Whooping cranes will need continued habitat protection, regular population monitoring, egg switching on nesting grounds to replace infertile eggs with fertile ones from another nest, prescribed burning, marsh creation, and studies of competition for food with humans and other wildlife.

Partnerships

Army Corps of Engineers: The Corps protects whooping crane habitat through its permitting process for private-sector dredge and fill activities at coastal sites, and consults with the Fish and Wildlife Service on its own dredging activities at those sites. Also, the Corps is assisting in testing methods of dredge spoil disposal to create marshlands, and is placing concrete slabs to protect marshlands from erosion.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: This State agency is assisting in managing the Matagorda Island portion of the Federal refuge, conducting surveys near Matagorda Island, protecting the cranes, and providing a State member to the Whooping Crane Recovery Team.

Mitchell Energy Corporation: The Corporation created 15 acres of marshland with dredge spoil, in compliance with Army Corps of Engineers permit requirements, and planted aquatic vegetation on that acreage.

Canadian Wildlife Service: Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and pilots are assisting the Canadian Wildlife Service in the annual egg pickup and chick surveys at the breeding grounds in the Northwest Territories.

Recovery Plan Status:

Original plan approved 4/12/85; revised 12/23/86.