Specific Comments on Platte River Draft EIS

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The habitat suitability guidelines for whooping crane on the Platte River are inconsistent with empirical data regarding whooping crane use of ro sting sites throughout the flyway. The common use of small water bodies as stopc fields containing as little as one-fourth acre of suitability guidelines indicating that whooping i riverine settings. Rather, these survey observatioi readily roost in wetlands containing only a limite by good horizontal and overhead visibility, and i and/or development. ,er roost sites, including farm ponds and flooded ?pen water, is in striking contrast to the habitat anes "require" 500-1,200 feet of open water in suggest that migrant whooping cranes will amount of open water if the site is characterized removed from areas of heavy human disturbance Relative to the nine radio-tracking surveys condu ted in the fall 1981 through spring 1984 - which monitored a total of 27 individual birds (includin juveniles, subadults, and adults) as they migrated through Nebraska - eight stopovers were recorded in the state, but none occuned on the Platte River. Use of the habitat suitability guidelines based distortion of the habitat needs of whooping crani the Service's radio-tracking surveys that were alleged preference for widths greater than 1,100 f i observations solely on the Platte is a gross as indicated by the confirmed sighting data and Zducted in the early 1980s. Furthermore, the on the Platte is contradicted by actual use data. A thorough re-evaluation of the habitat suitability guidelines and alleged "habitat requirements" for whooping cranes is needed to establish a scientific basis for whooping crane habitat needs. Each year, approximately one-half million sand central Nebraska for several weeks. A very fe` usually less than five birds. iill crane roost and feed on the Platte River in whooping crane use the Platte in small groups, The suggestion that lack of habitat on the Platte is crane recovery of the whooping crane is not suppo A more fundamental question relates to the relatio The nine-fold increase in population indicates that availability of migration habitat. If habitat is n( percent of whooping crane flying over the Platte and the current multi-million dollar effort on the P: ted - or will limit - recovery of the whooping by gLny factual information. hip of migration habitat availability to recovery. ;covery of whooping cranes is not limited by the - and will not - limit recovery, and only two e it, justification for critical habitat designation te simply is non-existent. 3.0 Use of the Platte River by Piping Plover andl Interior Least Tern A thorough analysis of historical habitat use b conducted by EA Engineering, Science, and Techr Interior Least Tern and Piping Plover in Nebraska 1988). (Copy enclosed with this testimony.) T sighting records for interior least tern and piping flow conditions on the Platte River above the Lou] and least tern. These analyses are not available in the interior least tern and piping plover was ?logy, Inc., Lincoln, Nebraska ("The Status of the Period of record through 1986)", September, s included a detailed analysis of the historical )lover in Nebraska, and an analysis of historical with respect to habitat needs of the piping plover ther literature reviewed. The analysis provided in the 1988 EA report sh?ws that the original pattern of high flows from mountain snow melt commencing in late April a d early May, and peaking in June, would have A-17