The World’s Last Flock of Wild Whooping Cranes Gets More Living Space

On an isolated stretch of Texas coastline, conservation groups have acquired more than 3,000 acres of nearly pristine prairie to preserve as habitat for endangered whooping cranes, one of the rarest birds in North America.

Groups this month announced the $8 million purchase of two tracts in rural Calhoun County, halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi, among the last substantial pockets of unplowed acreage along the Texas coast and the winter grounds for the world’s last wild flock of whooping cranes.

“Large, intact coastal landscapes are disappearing fast, and protecting this one is a major win,” said Julie Shackelford, Texas state director at The Conservation Fund, which bought the 2,200-acre Costa Grande Ranch. Less than five percent of Texas’ native coastal prairie remains, she said. 

The purchase of another, 1,100-acre coastal property by the International Crane Foundation marked that groups’ first such land acquisition since it was founded in 1973 to nurse the dwindling whooping crane population back from the brink of extinction.

Five-feet-tall, monogamous and known for elaborate dances, barely two dozen of these birds remained a century ago. Now almost 600 make up the last wild flock that still makes its ancient, annual migration between the Canadian taiga and the middle Gulf Coast of Texas, where only a smattering of protected areas offer them reliable nesting grounds.

“As the populations have grown, they have expanded more and more off of those protected lands,” said Carter Crouch, director of Gulf Coast programs at the International Crane Foundation. “If we want to have a continually growing and recovering population we need to secure sufficient wintering habitat.”

This stretch of waterfront, far from major population centers, remains relatively unspoiled by the industrial and urban development that has overtaken much of the Texas coastline. Most of the best preserved savannah exist on enormous family ranches, crawling with antelope and alligators, that have been passed down and divided for generations. 

Virtually no public access currently exists to the landscapes on this part of the coast, except for a federal wildlife refuge, although two major projects are planned here: a 17,000-acre Powderhorn Ranch State Park and a 6,400-acre Green Lake Park. 

“There is a lot of focus on all kinds of different aspects of conserving those natural resources now, while we still can,” said James Dodson, founder of the San Antonio Bay Partnership. “There are a lot of proposed new industrial facilities and things.”

He recalls visiting the nearby federal wildlife refuge as a Cub Scout in the 1960s, when it was winter grounds for the last few whooping cranes alive. Birders would come from across the country and the world to see these rare and majestic specimens. 

Later in life, Dodson, a former director of Corpus Christi’s water department, began working with the Crane Foundation on a project called Water for Wildlife, drilling wells and making ponds in the bush on private or government lands in the region to re-create the wetland habitats that whooping cranes and other animals here need. 

Most of this area was once grazed by cattle, Dodson said. Dredging of a ship channel offshore altered the coastline. Thirsty upstream cities have dried up the rivers that used to spill their regular freshwater floods over all of this region. 

But in general, it retains its natural shape and many of its old trees, as it was never cleared and flattened for agriculture. 

“It has been relatively unspoiled,” Dodson said. 

The Costa Grande Ranch, purchased by the Conservation Fund, will eventually be transferred to the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, a robust regional organization that preserves a collection of ecologically sensitive tracts that may be developed for public access. 

While the tall, dancing whooping cranes may capture most attention, these landscapes serve a multitude more species, according to Crouch at the Crane Foundation. Migratory routes connecting Canadian forests with Central American jungles converge along the Gulf Coast of Texas, forming one of the busiest flyways on the continent. 

A multitude of fulltime native species here also face the constant pressure of habitat loss due to urban and industrial sprawl. Texas has led the country in population and economic growth during the last 20 years, fueled in large part by the petrochemical industries that continue to expand along its coast. 

“The Texas coast is certainly under a lot of development threat,” Crouch said. “This part of the world gets an incredible amount of bird use, it’s incredibly important to these species.”