The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced plans to reintroduce a non-migratory flock of endangered whooping cranes in Louisiana. If this proposal is approved, the reintroduction could begin in early 2011.

There are approximately 1.3 million acres of suitable marsh habitat in southwestern coastal Louisiana. The cranes are not expected to be affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Whooping cranes occurred historically in Louisiana in both a residential, non-migratory flock and a migratory flock that wintered in the state. The proposed release area is the location where whooping cranes have been documented raising young in Louisiana.

"With just under 400 birds in the wild, the vast majority of which winter along the Texas coast, whooping cranes are among our nation's most threatened species." said Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, in a written statement.

The reintroduction is proposed as part of an ongoing recovery effort for this endangered species, which was on the verge of extinction in the 1940s and even today has only about 395 individuals in the wild (none in Louisiana). The only self-sustaining wild population of whooping cranes migrates between Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories of Canada and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, and remains vulnerable to extinction from continued loss of habitat and unpredictable severe weather during migration.

The FWS proposes the new, reintroduced, non-migratory population of whooping cranes be designated as a "non-essential, experimental population," or NEP, under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. This designation allows compatible routine human activities in the reintroduction area and permits taking whooping cranes when such take is accidental and incidental to an otherwise lawful activity, such as agriculture, recreation and hunting. The intentional killing of any NEP-designated whooping crane would still be a violation of federal law punishable under the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

In 2000, the FWS established a similar experimental population that migrated between Wisconsin and Florida. Researchers used ultra-light aircraft to teach the cranes to fly from their central Wisconsin nesting grounds to their winter home in Florida. This summer, that population numbered 97 cranes, including nine pairs that attempted to nest.

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