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| orange: former wintering and nesting sites |
There are several different types of
cranes throughout the world. The whooping crane is one of the North American species.
Another is the the sandhill crane. (See Phylogenic
Chart) Paleontologists think this majestic bird flew over the continent in pre-historic time. In the Pleistocene Epoch (10,000 to 1 million years ago) whoopers were at their peak, but it's hard
to say just how many there were. People started to keep track of the
population count of the whooping crane in the mid-1800s. There were between 1200 and
1500 birds then. Unfortunately for the whooping crane, that's the time when
western settlement in the United States was booming. While Laura Ingles Wilder
and her family were busy dealing with the problems of living in
the Wild Wild West, the whooper also faced hard times. The birds found their homes
disappearing and then, as their popularity with hunters and collectors grew, they found themselves disappearing as well. By the 1930s the birds were scarce. Of the original 1500 birds, only
two flocks remained--some 150 birds, maybe less. By 1938 one flock lived
year-round in Louisiana, but half was killed in a storm. The last survivor from
this flock died in 1950.
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