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MILWAUKEE - A conservation effort
involving an ultralight plane leading endangered whooping cranes south
for the winter has been forced to stop short of its Florida
destination, with officials deciding Thursday to stay in Alabama.
Operation Migration has experienced
delay after delay, mostly due to weather, since leaving central
Wisconsin Oct. 9. Now the nine young cranes have apparently decided to
end their migration in Alabama.
It will be the first time in the 11
years of the effort to save the birds in the eastern part of the
United States that a class won't make it to their wintering home at
two wildlife refuges in Florida.
"You are disappointed. You have a
task," said Operation Migration spokeswoman Liz Condie. "You
have been phenomenally successful for 10 years, and all of sudden you
are not. Well it's not expected and we don't have to like it."
The cranes and the crew of seven have
been in northern Alabama since Dec. 11. The crew tried several times
to get the birds to follow the bird-like aircraft, most recently on
Jan. 29, but the birds have not been cooperative — trying to fly off
on their own.
They've moved only 14 miles since Dec.
11. Officials don't know exactly why because migration is not fully
understood.
Operation Migration is part of the
Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership, a coalition of public and private
groups that includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, International
Crane Foundation in Baraboo, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Operation Migration started in 2001. It
involves workers in Wisconsin donning crane-like costumes to raise
chicks hatched in captivity and then leading them in those costumes by
ultralight plane to Florida in the fall.
The Eastern Partnership had its annual
meeting in Wisconsin this week, where they decided Thursday the birds
will be put in crates and transported by road to Alabama's Wheeler
National Wildlife Refuge for the rest of the winter. It's about 45
miles northeast from their current pen site.
With the mild winter across North
America, Pete Fasbender, field supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife
Service in Green Bay, Wis., said the whooping cranes don't want to fly
further south. "They're thinking about heading north here pretty
quick."
Only five to seven whooping cranes are
in Florida this year, Fasbender said. Bringing the young birds to
Florida at this stage would disrupt their migration pattern and they
would head back to Michigan instead of Wisconsin, he said.
"The birds are pretty smart. If
they've got water and not a lot of snow cover, they've got food,
they're not taking that risk" of flying further south, Fasbender
said.
Condie said the latest the 1,300
air-mile trip had lasted until now was Jan. 28 in 2007. It's ended as
early as late November.
This year's events are not yet
considered a setback, she said. It depends how the birds — North
America's tallest — handle the migration back north in the spring,
she said.
The details of when the birds will be
transported and how they will be released are still being ironed out.
She said it's possible the nine whooping cranes could hook up with
thousands of sandhill cranes or the handful of the whooping cranes
that are at the refuge, but it's too soon to say what would happen
after that.
Condie said other many other sandhill
and whooping crane flocks have also stopped short of more southern
destinations, apparently finding suitable habitat for living and
eating. She said it could be the unusually warm winter in many parts
of the nation.
The effort was also delayed about a
week in Alabama waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to
grant them a special exemption to continue their journey.
The group ran into trouble because it
pays salaries to pilots. FAA regulations say sport planes — a
category that sometimes includes aircraft of exotic design — can
only be flown for personal use. The FAA granted a waiver to allow the
pilots to finish the migration.
FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory
said Thursday the FAA is working with Operation Migration about next
year's flights. She said it's possible the organization will be
required to file for a waiver next year or it could get an exemption.
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