Counting Successes
Whooping Cranes are one of the most rare, highly endangered and closely monitored bird species in North America. That's how we know so many details about the lives of each bird in the reintroduced flock.

It is a joy to look back on some successes to celebrate in the flock's first 15 years:

Eastern Flock Milestones

2005: Two nests established and two eggs laid

2006: First successfully fledged chick in the Eastern Migratory Population

2007: All nests failed but one rescued egg hatched to become Crane #717 in the ultralight-led cohort.

2009: Rescued eggs from the first failed nest of cranes #309 and #403 hatched in captivity and became ultralight-led chicks #906 and #908. 

2010: Two chicks, #W1-10 and #W3-10 (from a captive-produced egg), survived to fledging. This was only the second time in over a century that naturally produced Whooping Cranes have fledged in the wild in the Midwest/Eastern North America!

2017: First nest at Wisconsin's Green Lake County’s White River Marsh! The marsh, roughly 60 miles east of Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, is the site of the training ground where chicks for aircraft-led migration were taken starting in 2011. The area is not in the territory of the three species of blackflies that feed on birds and caused so many nest failures at Necedah NWR.

• The first ultralight-led chick hatched from an egg that had been laid by parents in the eastern flock. (Chick #2-06) The egg was rescued from the wild parents' nest and costume-raised.
• The new flock's first chick to survive to fledge (W1-06) became the first wild-born chick in the new flock to make her migration the normal way—with her parents teaching her the route. She became the first second-generation Whooping Crane to successfully complete the migration south when the family reached Florida on December 9, 2006!

Hope for a Sustainable Flock
Since 2006, only nine additional chicks have been fledged in the wild in this flock. Overall, survival of released Whooping Cranes has been acceptable, but successful reproduction has been too low for the flock to be considered self-sustaining.

Whooping cranes can live a long time — 20 years or more in the wild. They can reproduce as long as they live. Each year a crane survives is another year of hope that it will pass on its genes and add to the flock. Whooping Cranes hatching and raising their own baby Whooping Cranes: That's nature's way to build a flock that lives and grows. That's everyone's hope for the Eastern Migratory Population!

By Jane Duden
April, 2017