WOCC Participates in Annual Mississippi Sandhill Crane Release

November, 2011 - White Oak Conservation Center became involved with the Mississippi Sandhill Crane Recovery Program managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1994.  Special facilities were designed at White Oak and a captive breeding program for the cranes was initiated.  Several pairs of birds in the WOCC flock produce eggs and chicks every year at White Oak, raised for annual releases of the cranes into the Mississippi Sandhill Crane Wildlife Refuge.

This past year, White Oak Conservation Center contributed 8 Mississippi Sandhill Cranes to the annual release program.   Of these, four of the chicks were parent reared by the captive flock at WOCC.  The other four birds were produced from eggs laid by the WOCC flock, and then sent to be hatched and costume reared by our program partners at the Audubon Nature Institute. This technique allows more birds to be produced each year for release, as these cranes will lay multiple eggs each season but generally raise only a single chick.  Both parent reared and costume reared chicks were then combined for socialization purposes prior to release.  By combining groups, this gives the cranes a better chance of survival in the wild as they bring different survival instincts with them.

The cranes are brought to the Mississippi Sandhill Crane Wildlife Refuge where they begin the reintroduction process. They are held in a large fenced enclosure for about a month until they become used to their new surroundings. Each crane has temporary brails placed on their wings to keep them from flying away too soon. After this month of acclimation, the brails are removed allowing the cranes to begin to fly out of the enclosure as they become acclimated. Each crane is fitted with a radio backpack in order to monitor their status in the Refuge.

Due to their non-migratory nature, the released cranes will stay at the Refuge, where the population has grown from about 30 cranes in the 1970s to almost 130 birds today.  The release program is critical to the recovery and survival of the wild population of Mississippi Sandhill cranes.

Just this past weekend the last of this year’s cranes left the release enclosure to venture into the wild.

View a photo album of the release from the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge on their page.