Spring 2001 Whooping Crane Migrational Survey Protocol Implementation Report

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to one location used by a crane group. There are 40 records in this table in the database. • Use Profiles- The data in this table comes from the profile measurements on the Use Site Characteristics data sheet. One record in this table corresponds to one point along a depth profile measured at riverine use sites. There are 1241 records in this table in the database. • Flight Data- The data in this table comes from the Aerial Survey Log. One record corresponds to one leg of an aerial survey flight. There are 110 records in this table in the database. • Flight Observations - The data in this table comes from the Aerial Survey Log. One record corresponds to an observation of whooping crane (WHCR) or decoy during an aerial. flight. There are 20 records in this table in the database. Independent ground surveys were conducted by the Nebraska Wildlife Federation's Whooper Watch program. The EDO at the request of the TC drafted a ground survey protocol for implementation during Whooper Watch (Appendix D). Two driving survey routes were defined in each of the 12 bridge segments, one on the North and one on the South side of the river (Appendix E). III. Results The February 23, 2001 draft protocol directs aerial flights during spring migration, classified as the period from March 18 to April 30 for a total of 44 flight days. Due to weather there were only 30 aerial survey flights flown in the Eastern half of the study area and 25 aerial survey flights flown in the Western half of the study area. Two of the returning surveys (flying east) in the Eastern half were aborted due to bad weather, resulting in 66% and 57% of the 88 possible flight legs (44 flight days, a riverine and upland leg each day) in the East and West respectively that had adequate weather conditions for flight. Each aerial flight covered the riverine transect on the first flight leg travelling West and one of 6 upland transects on the return leg travelling East. The six upland transects were aligned parallel to the riverine transect and were located 1, 2, and 3 miles North and South of the river. AIM designated the order of the return flights to be 1 S, 1N, 2S, 2N, 3S, 3N and repeated this order though the 44 flights. AIM did not deviate from this order when a scheduled flight was cancelled, resulting in a different number of flights for each transect (Table 1). There were five observations of whooping crane groups (one or more cranes in a migrating unit) during the aerial surveys (Table 2). The protocol used during implementation did not attempt to define `new' crane groups so there is no estimate of the number of individual crane groups the five observations represent. There were many possible sightings of whooping crane groups by the aerial flight crew. Possible sightings are defined as sighting reports from the aerial crew to the ground crew, and are requests for confirmation of the sighting by the ground crew. These sightings could not be designated as anything other than a whooping crane group by the aircrew. In following up the possible sightings on the ground, five possible sightings were confirmed as crane groups, six possible sightings were unconfirmed (i.e., the "white object" was never located on the ground), and an unknown number of possible sightings were found to be Spring 2001 Whooping Crane Survey Report 2 11/19/01