America's whooping cranes bounce back

By Michael Graczyk

updated 2:06 p.m. ET May 9, 2005

AUSTWELL, Texas - Armed with a pencil and a clipboard full of detailed color aerial maps, wildlife biologist Tom Stehn climbs into a tiny Cessna aircraft to document the well-being of one of the rarest birds in North America.

For about seven hours, usually on Wednesdays, Stehn flies 200 feet above a 35-mile-long section of Texas coastline near Corpus Christi to check marshes, barrier reefs and islands for what blossomed this year to a record flock of 217 wild whooping cranes.

“I try to find every crane,” said Stehn, who crisscrosses the territory in quarter-mile segments. “On a sunny day, I can see them a mile away.”

Stehn became a crane expert by necessity when he transferred in 1982 to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the winter home to the only remaining known wild whooping cranes on the continent. The Schenectady, N.Y., native is now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Whooping Crane Coordinator.

Although the birds average about 15 pounds in weight, the typical whooping crane stands nearly 5 feet tall, making it the continent’s tallest bird. It has black facial markings and a bare patch of red skin at the top of its head. Its white feathers contrast sharply with the lush green grasses and muddy brown waters of the Texas coast.

“You see the horizon, the cranes in the marsh, the oak trees in the distance. That’s the way it’s looked for hundreds and hundreds of years,” Stehn said after a recent flight. “These birds have come generation after generation, dating back hundreds of thousands of years. It’s part of a natural system and we want to keep it that way if at all possible.”

Development pressure
While spotting the elusive whooping crane — whose shriek provides its name — is not particularly difficult, saving the endangered species remains a challenge as waterfront development continues at the refuge’s edges, Texas’ population grows and the demand for fresh water increases, Stehn said.

Ron Heflin / AP Wildlife biologist Tom Stehn, seen here in the salt marsh at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Austwell, Texas, does the actual count of the whooping cranes that winter in the refuge.

Even though the bird’s overall numbers are meager, they do represent a remarkable comeback. In 1941, only 15 whooping cranes were known to exist in the wild. They survived the uncontrolled hunting at the time and development of drained wetlands, which eliminated the birds’ natural habitat stretching from Mexico to northern Canada.

Now, “they’re all right here,” Stehn said.

But not for long.

With extended hours of daylight signaling the onset of spring and summer, the wild cranes instinctively head north for a hazardous 2,500-mile flight to Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada’s Northwest Territories, where most of them make their summer home. A few started leaving Texas in early April. By early May, they’ll all be gone.

It wasn’t until 1954, when a Canadian fire crew accidentally discovered them, that anyone even knew where the birds went when they made their annual migration from Texas.

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