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,l <br />22 March 2000 <br />Sharon Whitmore <br />Acting Nebraska Field Supervisor <br />U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service <br />203 W2 nd St <br />Grand Island NE 68801 <br />Dear Sharon, <br />This is in response to your letter dated 6 March 2000 requesting comments on <br />your Draft Milestones R3 -1 Document. I offer the following comments. <br />Whooping Crane <br />Off -river roost sites should be included in your list of suitable habitat if, in fact, <br />an adaptive resource management approach is taken. The data is overwhelming in that <br />x- whooping cranes are birds of palustrine and lacustrine wetlands NOT riverine habitat. <br />While whooping cranes do use the Platte River for roosting, it may be that the loss of <br />wetlands bordering the river has had a greater impact on use. During 1940 through 1985 <br />there were 534 confirmed sightings in the lower 48 states. Only 10 or 1.2% were on the <br />Platte River. This percentage would be even less if Canadian sightings were included. <br />From 1970 through 1998, 38% of the years exhibited no confirmed whooping <br />crane sightings along the Platte River. On average, less than I% of the population was <br />confirmed in the Platte Valley during the same time frame (0 -3% in any given year). The <br />number of confirmed sightings on riverine habitat anywhere within the migration corridor <br />is less than 3% of the total. Anecdo 1 evidence along the Platte suggests that whooping <br />cranes were attracted to th vast wetlan in the late 1940s and early 1950s before <br />extensive drainage occurred (Currier et. al, 1985. Migratory Bird Habitat on Platte and <br />North Platte Rivers in Nebraska, p.29). <br />During the 1981 -1984 radio - tracking study of whooping cranes, 18 whoopers <br />were tracked on 3 southbound and 2 northbound migrations. None of them used the <br />Platte River (see Marshall Howe's 1989 FWS Technical Report of this study). In fact, I <br />became part of the ground - tracking crew in the spring of 1984 after 2 subadult whoopers <br />spent 22 days near Hershey along the North Platte River and the original tracking crew <br />had to attend to other obligations. These birds never used the river for roosting, rather <br />they used the same palustrine wetlands that the sandhill cranes use in that particular <br />staging area. <br />I co- authored a paper on whooping crane migration ecology in Nebraska (Lingle, <br />et.al, 1987. Migration ecology of whooping cranes in Nebraska. Proc International <br />