Spring Blizzard Destroys Calgary Zoo’s Endangered Whooping Crane Eggs
By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
April 30, 2009
CALGARY - Unseasonably cold weather has dealt a blow to the Calgary Zoo’s whooping crane breeding program, freezing two of the rare birds’ eggs.
Zoo curator Bob Peel said a blizzard last week demonstrated the fragility of conservation efforts for an endangered species with a world population of less than 500.
“Every adult is important. Every egg is important,” he said.
Spring is the key season for the zoo’s whooping crane breeding project, the only pro-gram of its type in Canada.
Located at the zoo’s Devonian Wildlife Conservation Centre south of the city, the project features 20 “cranedominiums”– heated shelters for a 24-bird breeding flock.
But the white cranes prefer to nest outside, Peel said. “You have to let them choose where they want.”
On April 22, when a spring blizzard blew through, the crane keepers checked on the 10 laid eggs. Even with snow covering the ground, the cranes stayed on the nests and everything seemed all right.
But a wind came up later in the night and scared the tall birds from two nests, Peel said.
“It’s a loss,” he said sadly.
Since then, more eggs have been laid.And the complicated process of collecting semen from the males and artificially inseminating the females will continue, Peel said.
The crane team artificially inseminates the birds several times a week in the spring with the hope each pair will produce up to six eggs yearly.
“You don’t know exactly when females are going to ovulate, and the sperm has to contact the egg before the shell forms on an egg,” Peel said.
Eggs will be transported to Maryland, where they will be raised by people dressed in white crane outfits so the birds don’t imprint on humans. For more than 40 years, Canadians and Americans have co-operated in recovering the whooping crane population.
The Alberta government is studying a proposal to allow hunting of the significantly more common sandhill crane — the other type of North American crane.
Peel and others are concerned, saying whooping cranes could be mistaken for sandhill cranes. Environmentalists also worry the sandhill crane population isn’t strong enough to support a hunt.
kcryderman@theherald. canwest.com
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