by Chester McConnell, FOTWW
Friends of the Wild Whoopers is continuing its project to encourage development and management of stopover habitats for migrating Whooping Cranes. We have visited military bases, Indian Reservations and some private lands within the six state migration corridor (TX, OK, KS, NE, SD and ND). Our mission is to provide advice to land managers about how to develop and/or manage existing ponds/wetlands to be useful as roosting/feeding sites for migrating Whooping Cranes. The cranes must stopover approximately 15 to 20 times during their 2,500 mile migration between Canada’s Wood Buffalo nesting area and their wintering area at Aransas Refuge on the Texas coast.
Some management relationships discovered
During our field trips to the various sites we have learned about some management relationships that we had not been aware of. We learned that livestock, including cattle and bison can make some ponds/wetlands more suitable as stopover areas. Livestock normally walk around ponds until they reach a shallow area where they can safely enter the ponds and drink. As they are moving around they are also grazing and trampling vegetation on pond shores. Whooping Cranes use these same shallow areas with sparse vegetation to enter the ponds to roost. We observed this relationship on numerous ponds/wetlands especially in North and South Dakota.
Whooping Cranes avoid certain sites
Whooping Cranes do not use ponds/wetlands as stopover sites where tall, dense vegetation closely surrounds the pond shore. They avoid sites anywhere they would have to move through dense vegetation where predators may be lurking such as shown in Figure 1.
Fortunately, around some ponds, livestock have grazed and trampled the vegetation while getting a drink and grazing the more succulent vegetation (Figure 3).This results in more unobstructed shore areas that allow Whooping Cranes to use ponds as stopover sites.
Some concern has been expressed that livestock cause shoreline erosion and contamination of the stock dams/ponds that results in some murky, dirty water. While this may have some merit, FOTWW did not detect any serious problems. We carefully observed the water in the ponds visited and could clearly see the pond bottom in shallow areas. We also firmly believe that the advantages of the stock dams/ponds far outweigh any disadvantages. Use of the ponds/wetland water resources by numerous species and many thousands of individual wild animals has caused the military and Indian Reservation’s habitats to be much more productive.
Some ponds in excellent condition
Some of the stock dams/ponds on the areas visited are currently in excellent condition to serve as secure Whooping Crane stopover habitats. And some other ponds/wetlands could easily and inexpensively be developed into good habitats. However others are not useful for Whooping Cranes because cattails, bushes and trees are thick along the shore areas. On these latter ponds FOTWW recommends that they be managed for other wildlife species that prefer dense vegetative cover.
Importantly, FOTWW contends that it is not necessary or desirable to modify or manage all ponds for Whooping Cranes but rather focus on a subset with the best ponds and surrounding landscape characteristics. Open landscapes including pasture and crop land allows Whooping Cranes to easily locate the ponds and provides ready observation of any predator threats.
***** FOTWW’s mission is to help preserve and protect the Aransas/Wood Buffalo
population of wild whooping cranes and their habitat. *****
Friends of the Wild Whoopers is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization.
