Friends of the Wild Whoopers (FOTWW) is issuing a challenge to legal minds and officials to offer solutions to resolve river flow dilemmas in Texas to save endangered whooping cranes. Whooping cranes are the symbol of conservation in North America. These beautiful birds stand 5 feet tall and are treasures to many thousands of people in the U.S. and other countries. Yet these magnificent birds are facing increasing threats. FOTWW wants to know if law firms or government agencies informed about the issue care enough to lend a helping hand?
FOTWW would appreciate receiving legally binding recommendations to help in this cause. Several law firms that wrote their thoughts about the“The Aransas Project v. Shaw” court suit should certainly have ideas for a reasonable solution/compromise. Please email your thoughts to: admin@FOTWW.org or fill out our contact form. With your permission we would post your recommendations on our web site: https://friendsofthewildwhoopers.org/ . Honest, considerate debate will be appreciated. This request for recommendations has no connection to the ongoing legal appeal Aransas Project v. Shaw. For background on the situation, please continue reading.
Approximately 304 endangered whooping cranes currently make their fall and winter home on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast. Every spring they migrate 2,500 miles north to Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada where they nest and rear their young chicks. Whooping cranes have been following this schedule for centuries.
When Europeans came to North America the situation began to change for whooping cranes. The new settlers had fire arms and killed the whoopers for food more effectively than the Indians before them. Even worse, settlers drained wetland sites used by the cranes as habitat. Millions of acres of whooper habitat were destroyed and converted to cities and agricultural fields.
As a result of man’s deeds whooping crane populations plummeted. They were eradicated from their habitats along the Atlantic coast, much of the Gulf of Mexico coast and vast areas of the northern United States and Canadian prairies.
In the early 1940’s, their numbers declined to a low of 15 on the Texas coast and 6 on the Louisiana coast. The last crane in Louisiana was captured in 1950 and relocated to Aransas Refuge where it died a year later. Then only 15 wild whooping cranes remained. These birds were the last of the only remaining self-sustaining flock of whooping cranes on the planet. After recognizing that whooping cranes were about to become extinct conservation interests worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse the downward trend. Their efforts were successful and the whooper population has slowly increased over the past 70 years to approximately 304 birds.
Unfortunately, alarming signs of trouble are once again threatening whooping cranes. As the U.S. human population has increased more habitats used by the cranes has been destroyed and degraded. And now the huge human population growth and development in Texas is using ever increasing quantities of fresh water.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, there are 7,400 dams in Texas. A total of 4,700 of these dams create reservoirs having a surface area greater than 5 acres. The volume of the 4,700 – 5 acre or larger lakes/reservoirs totals 1,988,801,388 acre-feet and a surface area of 2,269,900 acres. These lakes/reservoirs have many benefits but they do reduce the natural stream flows reaching estuaries and have adverse impacts on these important areas.
Less and less fresh water is being allowed to flow downstream into estuaries along the gulf coast. The inflows of fresh water mixing with sea water provides high levels of nutrients in both the water column and sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. With reduced inflows of fresh river waters however, estuaries are suffering.
Healthy estuaries associated with San Antonio Bay, Matagorda Bay and Copana Bay within the Aransas Refuge complex are essential to whooping cranes. Estuaries along this area of the coast produce the foods for whooping cranes and numerous other species. Without the proper mix of fresh water and salt water, life in the estuaries declines to a point that wild critters depending on the normal situation starve or become unhealthy and do not reproduce.
FOTWW requests that individuals, law firms and agency officials offer their advice for legal solutions/compromise to assure that Texas Commission on Environmental Quality adopts and enforces appropriate environmental flow standards for the Guadalupe and San Antonio River basins. This is essential in order for the San Antonio Bay system to adequately support a sound ecological environment to the maximum extent reasonable considering other public interests and other relevant factors. Also there is a need to establish an amount of unappropriated water, if available, to be set aside to satisfy the environmental flow standards to the maximum extent reasonable when considering human water needs.
by Chester McConnell, FOTWW
***** FOTWW’s mission is to help preserve and protect the Aransas/Wood Buffalo population of
wild whooping cranes and their habitat. *****
