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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
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Whooping Crane Chicks in Training | Whooping Crane Chicks in TrainingJim 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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