Organizing for Endangered and Threatened Species Habitat Draft

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Habitat Requirements of Whoapinl; Cranes, Piping Plovers, and Least Terns "We are not trying to turn t]1e river back to its pre-European historical condition. That is impossible. We are trying to maintain pockets of serviceable habitat." United States Fish and Wildlife Service What a bird requires of its e;nvironment is in limited supply--food, shelter, and nesting sites. Birds of the same and similair species make similar demands on the habitat-the more individuals in a given territory, the less supply for any given request. Therefore, many birds are territorial and compete amongst eac;h other for scarce resources. What therefore is needed for preservation and protection of the several species are larger quantities of habitat to support the numbers of species competing for the resources available. As human impact has destroyed the wide shallow braided Platte in most reaches, the story of the whooping cranes, their cousins the sandhill cranes, least terns and piping plovers is one of being crowded into ever smaller reaches of viable habitat along with millionis of other migrating birds who press into the same area. Whooping cranes, Grus americana, are among the largest birds in the world-standing over five feet tall, with a wingspan of 7.5 feet, they weigh on average 14 pounds and frequently fly 200 to 500 miles per day during; migration. They lay two eggs a year, and live as long as 40 years. Brilliant white birds, with black wingtips and bare red faces, whooping cranes share the habitat of the sandhill crane, a smaller, gray, more numerous cousin. Whooping cranes, one of the most celebrated of endangered species, is a loner--much less gregarious than its prolific relative, the sandhill. Whooping cranes have a convoluted windpipe as much as five feet long, that can produce loud and resonant calls while flying. Audubon asserted that he could hear whoopers at a distance of three miles (Forbush and May 1955). Flocks of sandhills joined by a few whoopers visit the Platte River• in March-April and October as they move from wintering grounds on the Texas gulf to breeding areas in Northern Canada and then make their autumn return. The fossil record places saridhill cranes in Nebraska more than nine million years ago, long before there was a Platte River which, by comparison, is only about 10,000 years old. Well drawn descriptions of cranes are re;adily available (Matthiessen 2001; Walkinshaw 1973). Whooping cranes have come to syrnbolize a variety of things in different cultures around the world: conservation, royal beauty, ;and wilderness. They now have become the major symbol of a proposed reorganization of water in the three states of the Platte river basin. The population of whooping cranes, prior to European settlement of North America, has been estimated to have been about 15, 000 (Matthiessen 2001: 274). They once ranged along the Atlantic seaboard as did the sandhill. However, as Europeans settlement increased, their numbers decreased. Very edible atid of great size, whooping cranes were decimated by rifles of the settler-hunter. In 1860, the whooping crane population was estimated by some to be in the range of 1,300 to 1,400 birds, while others estimated as few as 500 - 700 individuals (Allen 1952). During the nineteenth century the whooper retreated to west of the Mississippi, and by 1880 was a rare bird everywhere. ,A non-migratory population in south-west Louisiana fell to disease in 1940, and soon became extinct. By 1941 the number of individuals in the recorded migrating wild population had declined to 16 with only 6 to 8 breeding birds (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service 1997). 9