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Before European settlement, as many as 1,400 whooping cranes nested from Illinois to southern Canada, sharing their nesting grounds with the grizzly, bison, and wolf. The annual whooping crane migration took them to wintering grounds from the Carolinas to Mexico. Steadily, though, the crane's nesting grounds fell to the plow. They were also shot for their meat, and they died in disease outbreaks. The combination of habitat loss, direct killing, and disease proved too much for the crane to bear, and their numbers declined to near extinction. By 1937 only two small breeding populations of whooping cranes remained -- a nonmigratory population in southwestern Louisiana and a migratory population that nested in Canada and wintered on the Texas coast. The whooping crane was one of the first animals to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. To restore abundant numbers of whooping cranes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been working to breed cranes in captivity so they may eventually be released into the wild. Flocks of whooping cranes have been reintroduced into the wild at two sites. Thanks to these efforts, the number of whooping cranes has increased, with approximately 300 in the wild today.
Today the Attwater prairie chicken resides on one percent of its historic habitat. As part of the recovery program for the bird, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge in 1972. Since then, permanently protected prairie chicken habitat has grown from 3,500 acres to 10, 582 acres. A captive breeding program on the Refuge has effectively stabilized the number of Attwater prairie chickens in the wild..
The life of the black-footed ferret is intertwined with its main prey, the black tailed prairie dog. Historically prairie dogs made up 90 to 95 percent of a black-footed ferret's diet. Originally the ferrets lived throughout grasslands from Canada to Northern Mexico, reaching as far west as Utah. But as settlers plowed up the soil of the Great Plains and the government launched prairie-dog eradication campaigns, ferrets began an inevitable decline. The burrows where they sought shelter and reared their young disappeared, and many died from eating poisoned prairie dogs. In the 1960s, scientists grew alarmed by the sharp decline in the number of black-footed ferrets in the wild. By the 1970s, the ferret, though by then listed under the Endangered Species Act, was presumed extinct. Then, in 1981 a colony of 129 black-footed ferrets was found in a prairie dog town near Meeteetse, Wyoming. Although this discovery gave conservationists new cause for hope, the number of ferrets sharply declined to only 18 individuals within four years following an outbreak of disease. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service collected the remaining ferrets to breed them in captivity and release their offspring into the wild to restore the species. By 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had reintroduced 1,200 ferrets to sites in Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, and Arizona. The goal of the black-footed ferret recovery plan is to reintroduce an additional 1,500 ferrets into the wild and establish at least ten breeding populations by 2010. Photos coutesy USFWS. Up to Top |
Known to early Spanish settlers as viejos del agua or "old men of the water," the whooping crane is the tallest bird in North America. Reaching a height of five feet and a with a wing span of another seven feet, whooping cranes, with their snowy white bodies, sinuous necks, and red and black heads, are one of wild America's most treasured sights.
The grasslands of Texas and Louisiana were once one of the most productive wildlife habitats in America; home to millions of prairie chickens and other ground-nesting birds. But as the grasslands fell to the plow, many kinds of wildlife began to disappear, among them the Attwater prairie chicken. A potentially valuable game bird, the Attwater prairie chicken was one of the first birds listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Spending much of the day out of sight below ground, the black-footed ferret was not described by science until naturalist John James Audubon wrote about it in 1851. No one else commented on the ferret for another 26 years, but the animal's elusive nature did not keep it out of harm's way. Indeed, the lithe creature with a black bandit mask was destined to become one of North America's most endangered mammals.