Whooping Crane Tracking Study

To learn more about the Aransas-Wood Buffalo Whooping crane population, the Whooping Crane Tracking Partnership began banding and tracking the Aransas-Wood Buffalo Whooping Crane population in 2009. The purpose for this project is to document their locations, monitor survival and their stop over locations.

Since the study began, many key areas have been identified where the Whooping cranes stop over during migration. We did not know about many of these places until this study. Now that habitat around Aransas NWR and along the flyway corridor is under development pressures, hopefully some of these key stop over areas can be purchased, conserved, and protected to ensure that there will always be habitat available for the wild ones as they migrate along the flyway corridor.

Below is a video published February 10, 2014 by Texas Parks and Wildlife showing the capture and banding of and adult whooping crane wintering at Aransas NWR.                                          – Friends of the Wild Whoopers

The following report gives a more in depth explanation of the whooping crane tracking study project and its objectives.

The Unison Call, Spring/Summer 2013,Vol. 24 No. 1

Aransas–Wood Buffalo Whooping Crane Telemetry Projects

The Whooping Crane Tracking Partnership began in 2008 as a research project to use Platform Transmitting Terminals with Global Positioning System capabilities (GPS-PTTs) as a means to advance knowledge of whooping crane breeding, wintering, and migratory ecology including threats to survival and population persistence and to provide reliable scientific knowledge for conservation, management, and recovery of whooping cranes.

The Partnership is comprised of the Canadian Wildlife Service, Crane Trust, Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey, with support from the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, International Crane Foundation, and Parks Canada. Partners agree the opportunity to mark wild whooping cranes with GPS technology will greatly enhance our knowledge of whooping cranes and enable us to assess risks they face during their entire life cycle. To date we have captured and attached GPS-PTTs to 31 juvenile whooping cranes at breeding sites in Wood Buffalo National Park and 24 adult and 2 juvenile whooping cranes at wintering sites at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Capture teams consist of individuals with experience handling endangered cranes, including a licensed veterinarian.

At capture, the veterinarian performs a health check on each crane, which includes a general external examination, blood collection for pathogen, toxin, and
genetic screening, and fecal collections for parasite evaluation. Captured birds are marked with a GPS-PTT attached with a two-piece leg band that weigh approximately 72 grams, which represents <1.5% of body weight of adult whooping cranes. The GPSPTTs have solar panels integrated on all exposed surfaces to maximize battery recharge and provide an equipment lifespan of approximately 3–5 years. Transmitters are programmed to record 4 GPS locations/day which provides us detailed information on roosting sites, diurnal use sites, and general flight paths. Transmitters upload new data on a 56-hour schedule which generally allows us to identify mortality events fairly quickly when they occur. As our sample of marked cranes is reaching peak numbers, GPS-marked cranes provided >15,000 locations during winter 2012-2013. Expectations and excitement among research partners has increased and we have begun to explore
the volume of rich information provided by marked individuals.

In addition to collecting information provided by the GPS-PTTs, the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program and researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and Crane Trust are conducting a ground-based study spanning from northern Texas to North Dakota to evaluate habitats telemetry-marked whooping cranes have used as stopover sites during migration. The ground-based stopover site evaluations allow
researchers to collect time-sensitive data that would be difficult or impossible to measure remotely and have enabled us to learn a great deal about conditions surrounding stopover sites that may have attracted whooping cranes to the area. Where many stopovers occur on privately owned lands, these evaluations depend largely on landowners allowing researchers access to their properties and we are grateful for the
access landowners have provided us during the past several migration seasons. Upon completion of the research projects, the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program plans to use information obtained via telemetry and at stopover sites to create and manage similar habitats along the central Platte River in Nebraska.

Dave Baasch
Platte River Recovery Implementation Program

***** FOTWW’s mission is to protect the Aransas/Wood Buffalo population
of wild whooping cranes and their habitat. *****