UPDATE: One crane may have survived. Here’s the Associated Press article. You know what to do.
Bad news for scientists and conservationists who’ve worked for years to establish a second migratory breeding flock of whooping cranes. All 18 of the birds that arrived at Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in west-central Florida barely a month ago, having been led there from Wisconsin by an ultralight aircraft, were killed by one of the many storms that swept across the state Thursday.
The birds were in their enclosure when the storm hit and apparently died from drowning. Refuge personnel were unable to reach the enclosure at night, as this Associated Press article notes.
“It’s a fluke. It’s an unforeseen thing,” Joe Duff of Operation Migration told a reporter. “So many birds and they were such good birds. It was our hardest migration and our most difficult one to fund.”
