What caused the whooping cranes near extinction?
Several factors contributed to the historic decline of whooping cranes. Much of their wetland habitat was drained and converted to farm land. The migratory populations in the central U.S. and Canada lost large portions of their breeding and wintering habitat in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Then the non-migratory population lost much of its habitat in the coastal marshes and prairies of Louisiana and Texas as wetlands were converted for rice production. In addition to outright habitat loss, these activities increased the amount of human disturbance, which may have had adverse effects on crane behavior. At the same time, hunting, egg collecting, and specimen collecting were a substantial drain on the population, particularly from 1870 to 1920. Are there currently threats to whooping cranes? The wild flock winters in a small area in Texas where all the birds could be lost to a catastrophic event like a hurricane, red tide, or a contaminant spill which could destroy their habitat, eradi
