Each fall, just over 500 wild whooping cranes migrate about 4,000 kilometers from northern Alberta to Texas. There's a new sanctuary for them on the Texas Gulf Coast. Julie Shackelford is with the Conservation Fund in Texas and Carter Crouch is with the International Crane Foundation.

Calhoun County

A new sanctuary in Calhoun County, Texas, has been established to expand the protected habitat for whooping cranes, one of North America's rarest birds. The area, which includes the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and other conserved lands, now forms a 150,000-acre corridor for the cranes' wintering grounds.

Conservationists highlight that the whooping crane population, currently at about 550 individuals, has made significant progress due to decades of collaborative efforts. The expansion of permanently protected lands is seen as a vital step in ensuring the species' continued recovery and long-term survival.

New Texas sanctuary for wild whooping cranes

Well, the whooping cranes have been using the area for, of course, thousands of years, but the conservation corridor in that area, the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, is kind of the cornerstone of those protected lands. And so, between federal lands and state lands, and now these locally conserved properties through non-profits, we are just expanding roughly about 150,000 acre conservation corridor that the cranes are able to use. And as the crane numbers increase, of course, we need them on their wintering grounds to be able to expand into other lands, too. And so, to be able to add to the permanently protected lands that they can use forever is a really exciting thing. Carter, what does it mean for you to see these populations flourishing and coming back in this way? It's a many decades-long story that a ton of different groups and people have been involved in, and I'm just excited to be a small part of that. They've come a really long way, but we've also got a long way to go. 550 or so in this population is still an objectively rare bird, second rarest bird in North America, but certainly are on the right path. What's it like when people get a chance to see these birds for the first time? People are just surprised at how tall they actually are when you see them well. They're just an incredibly tall bird. They can look a lot of us eye-to-eye if they're close enough.

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