Whoopers Land at Midewin

Late last fall, a staff member at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Wilmington, Illinois, spotted a large white bird flying over the staff offices in mid-morning, accompanied by two gray sandhill cranes. “Several people were outside and noticed them and wondered what the white one was,” said William Glass, an ecologist at Midewin. It was a whooping crane, he confirmed, the first sighted at Midewin.

Not long after the lone whooping crane visited the Chicago Wilderness region last fall, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) proposed cost-cutting measures that would have eliminated a staff position dedicated to whooping crane recovery. Conservation advocates cried foul, and in early December the DNR board decided to restore the job.

Whooping cranes were nearly extinct in the 1940s, but reintroduction efforts have increased the wild population to nearly 300. The crane sighted at Midewin was one of 46 birds reintroduced through the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership. “The goal of the partnership is to establish a migrating flock of 125 birds, including 25 breeding pairs,” said Rachel Levin of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We certainly hope that this flock becomes self-sustaining.”

When the birds are first released to the wild, they need to be taught to migrate. So each fall since 2001, project partners have been using ultralight aircraft to lead a new class of young birds from their summer home in Wisconsin to a wildlife refuge in Florida, where they spend the winter. The birds only need to be shown the way once, and they make their northward migration on their own each spring.

Last fall, a new class of 13 birds completed the ultralight-guided tour. In addition, one bird was released with a group of adults that had already made the journey, and it completed the trip as well. Levin said this strategy of releasing young birds with the older, seasoned travelers could help speed the recovery process by increasing the number of birds that can be reintroduced each year.

The birds released in 2001 are now reaching breeding age, and the project team hopes to see them raising chicks in Wisconsin this summer. If all goes well, when the class of 2001 leaves for Florida in the fall of 2005, they will be leading the way for a new generation of truly wild whoopers.

— Stephanie Folk

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Whooping Big Bird Story (CW, Winter 1999)

Welcome Back, Whoopers (CW, Spring 2002)

Whoopers Return (CW, Summer 2002)