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Outdoors: FAVOR Hosts Bird Walk March 5
March 3rd, 2007

Outdoors: Refuge Open House Saturday
February 22nd, 2007

Outdoors: Bird Walk Will Take Place Saturday
January 1st, 2007

Outdoors: FAVOR Presents Program on Reptiles Saturday
November 13th, 2006

Outdoors: Florida Humanities Council Visits Cedar Key
October 26th, 2006

Outdoors: Update: Students and Many Others Help Clean Up Our Coast
September 18th, 2006

Outdoors: Help Us Clean Up Our Coast
September 10th, 2006

Outdoors: YCC Gets Froggy
August 7th, 2006

Outdoors: Lighthouse Open House Announced
July 11th, 2006

Outdoors: Birding Event Seeks Volunteers
June 21st, 2006

Outdoors: June is Great Outdoors Recreation Month
June 2nd, 2006

Outdoors: May Tide Table
May 5th, 2006


Whooping Crane Chicks in Training

Whooping Crane Chicks in Training

Jim Hoy

Operation Migration is carefully raising its 2011 crop of Whooping Crane chicks at its Wisconsin training site. The "class of 2011" is small, just ten birds. Eggs from captive parents were hatched in Maryland, a cooperative effort that includes U.S. and Canadian wildlife biologists and a small army of volunteer crane enthusiasts.
What is now a seventeen year project, Operation Migration, a non-profit organization, uses costumes and puppets to raise the chicks with a minimum of human contact. As the chicks near fledging they are trained to follow an ultra-light plane up and down a runway. Eventually the flock takes training flights. Well trained, in early fall the flock takes local flights and then the supervised trip to safe overwintering sites in Florida.
Whooping Cranes are an endangered species that has come back from the edge of extinction. The entire population was fifteen birds in the 1940`s. Operation Migration`s goal is to establish a population that summers and breeds in Wisconsin and winters in Florida. That population will serve as insurance against a catastrophe striking the population that summers and breeds in Canada and winters on the Texas Gulf Coast. Cedar Key News reports the training and migration of the eastern flock each year.
Endangered species can be saved from extinction. Sometimes a simple solution such as restricting the use of DDT saves endangered species such as Bald Eagles, Osprey and Brown Pelicans. Deer, cougars and alligators have recovered following legislative action.
Whooping Cranes and the California Condor are two species that have needed heroic help to counter habitat loss and human predation. Captive breeding flocks and training programs that recognize the need to preserve the natural fear of humans are in place. These programs, staffed by government biologists and dedicated volunteers go forward, aided by contributions from bird lovers from all over the North American continent. For more information please go to Operation Migration`s website.

www.operationmigration.org

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