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Texas has put endangered whooping cranes in harm’s way by diverting too much water from the Guadalupe River before it reaches their feeding grounds, according to a group that intends to file a federal lawsuit against the state’s environmental agency.
The Aransas Project, an alliance of local governments and conservation groups, said this week that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s river management resulted in an illegal taking of the iconic bird under the Endangered Species Act.
Under the federal law, the Aransas Project must wait at least 60 days before filing the suit. The 60 days starts today.
Andrea Morrow, a TCEQ spokeswoman, said that the agency “manages these scarce resources closely and curtails, denies or allows diversions as conditions warrant.”
The legal fight comes at the end of the deadliest year on record for the cranes, with 23 birds having perished along the Texas coast, nearly 10 percent of the world’s last migratory flock.
Federal and state wildlife biologists have blamed the die-off on a dry spell that reduced the Guadalupe’s flow so severely that the supply of freshwater and food for the cranes dwindled in the basin of San Antonio Bay.
Houston attorney Jim Blackburn, who represents the advocacy group, said TCEQ allows too much water to be drawn from the river, leaving insufficient water to sustain the cranes. What’s more, the situation will worsen for the birds if all existing water rights are used fully, including 75,000 acre feet reserved for a proposed nuclear power plant, Blackburn said.
The cranes depend upon the availability of blue crabs, which account for nearly 90 percent of the whoopers’ diet and need a certain amount of fresh water to survive, he said.
In the past year, with the lowest flows into San Antonio Bay since 1956 at the height of the worst drought on record in Texas, the bay was saltier. The result: fewer crabs and several emaciated cranes.
Blackburn said his group is seeking a new management plan for the river basin that places a higher priority on the needs of the cranes. Until then, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality shouldn’t be allowed to grant new permits for water from the Guadalupe, which stretches 300 miles from the Hill Country to San Antonio Bay.
“This is about getting some amount of water back into the bay system,” Blackburn said. “The part of the basin has been so neglected that it’s dying.”
State officials, meanwhile, are studying what are called environmental flows—the amount of water needed for the health and productivity of every river system in Texas.
Morrow said the study, which was ordered by state lawmakers two years ago, should bolster the agency’s efforts to protect wildlife in these ecosystems.