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Biologist notes bad conditions for the endangered species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported the death of the first whooping crane this season at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on Monday.
The body of the endangered bird was found after scientists noted that the radio transmitter attached to its leg was not moving from its established territory on Matagorda Island.
“It could have been predation,” Refuge Manager Dan Alonso said. “It could have been a multiple of things.”
The results of the necropsy are not expected for several weeks and will likely not be conclusive, but the death of a crane this early in the wintering season does not bode well for the rest of the flock, said former refuge biologist Tom Stehn, who monitored the cranes at the refuge from 1982 until his retirement this fall.
The marshes the birds depend on for their winter forage are in one of the worst droughts on record. The water has a high salinity and the cranes’ preferred food source, blue crabs, are scarce, according to refuge reports.
“I’ve run across that combination seven times in the last 20 years, and all seven times there was higher than average crane mortality,” Stehn said. “That is not putting the finger on the causation, but it is certainly saying this is not good conditions for the cranes this winter.”