Aransas NWR Updates

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Whooping Crane Partnership for Increasing Public Awareness in Texas

by Lee Ann Linam, Texas Representative, Friends of the Wild Whoopers

Lee Ann Johnson Linam, Texas Representative, Friends of the Wild Whoopers

On May 26, 2015, I represented Friends of the Wild Whoopers (FOTWW) at the Whooping Crane Partnership meeting held at Texas Parks and Wildlife headquarters in Austin. Approximately 15 people representing Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), Audubon Texas, Ducks Unlimited, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Friends of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, and the International Crane Foundation (ICF) were also in attendance.

This partnership was launched during the past year in response to discovery of a Whooping Crane carcass near a hunting blind in coastal Texas. Although that circumstance is still under investigation, the Executive Director of TPWD contacted Audubon Texas and asked that organization to spearhead a collaborative effort to increase public awareness about Whooping Cranes. This will serve as a follow-up to an outreach campaign that TPWD implemented in 2013 following shooting deaths of two Whooping Cranes in Texas in 2012-13. The partnership met once in February of this year to discuss initial ideas.

The goals of the partnership are to:

  • Develop a stronger understanding of the education/outreach needs regarding the wintering Whooping Crane population in Texas
  • Identify our greatest opportunities to achieve scalable conservation outcomes
  • Develop and coordinate priorities for winter 2015 and 2016
  • Improve our ability to leverage the capacity of the participating state, federal and NGO’s to support the work
  • Develop a common approach to how we deploy initiatives

Several strategies were discussed at the meeting. A few, such as special mailings to Texas waterfowl and Sandhill Crane hunters, were identified as too expensive ; however, the group has begun to make progress on other ideas, including:

  • TPWD Law Enforcement staff will place an announcement in the Fall 2015 Hunt Texas newsletter which goes out to subscribing sportsmen in Texas.
  • TPWD Migratory Program staff will work to ensure that Whooping Crane identification information, along with an emphasis on the stiff penalties for violations, will continue to be featured in the Department’s annual hunting season publication, the Outdoor Annual.
  • ICF and FOTWW representatives will contact hunting lodges reached in 2013 to see if they need additional posters or flyers depicting Whooping Crane identification.
  • ICF and FOTWW will follow up on the 2013 project to place identification signs at boat launches to see if signs need to be installed or replaced.
  • ICF will form an ad-hoc committee to design billboards to be placed in the Coastal Bend region of Texas to help citizens and hunters be more aware of the presence of Whooping Cranes. FOTWW will provide representation to the committee and funding matches for billboards.
  • Audubon and Wade Harrell, FWS Whooping Crane Coordinator, will contact the FWS Migratory Bird program to see if information on Whooping Crane identification can be included in federal duck stamps that are mailed to hunters. TPWD staff will also present the issue at the Central Flyway meeting.
    friendsofthewildwhoopers.org logo

    friendsofthewildwhoopers.org

    ***** FOTWW’s mission is to help preserve and protect the Aransas/Wood Buffalo
    population of wild whooping cranes and their habitat. *****
    Friends of the Wild Whoopers is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization.

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Dredging to improve Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and Whooping Crane Habitat

by Friends of the Wild Whoopers Admin

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project designed to maintain the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) along the Texas coast also has features planned to help Whooping Cranes according to Friends of the Wild Whoopers (FOTWW). Chester McConnell, president of FOTWW advised that the group plans to closely monitor the project to evaluate its effects. “We have been involved with dredging projects where the dredge material has been used to benefit wetland wildlife species and we know this can be done” according to McConnell.

Whooping Cranes along the Gulf Intracostal Waterway

Whooping Cranes along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway adjacent to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plays a significant role in keeping America’s waterways open and commerce flowing,” said Seth Jones, an operations manager with the USACE Galveston District’s Navigation Branch. “The Texas portion of the GIWW alone carries 73 million tons of cargo a year valued at $40 billion.”The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District awarded a maintenance dredging contract in the amount of $2,967,500 to Orion Marine Construction Inc., to dredge the GIWW across Aransas Bay in Aransas and Calhoun counties, Texas. The contractor will use a pipeline dredge to remove approximately 1,323,000 cubic yards of material from the GIWW across Aransas Bay and the Lydia Ann Channel.

Work is expected to begin in mid-June 2015 with an estimated completion date of October 2015. According to Jones, a portion of the dredged material will be used beneficially as part of ongoing marsh creation within the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

Dawn Gardiner, Assistant Field Supervisor of the Corpus Christi Office of Texas Coastal Ecological Services, USFWS believes that creating more marsh with the dredge material will be a good use. Gardiner told Friends of the Wild Whoopers that “the dredge material would be spread over existing marsh in a manner to allow continued growth of wetland vegetation. The marsh is intended to benefit Whooping Cranes as well as other wildlife species.”

Barges on Gulf Intracoastal Waterway

Barges on Gulf Intracoastal Waterway

Gardiner further explained that “…the current marsh is eroding away and is anticipated to continue to do so with sea level rise and increasing barge traffic. Beneficially using dredge material can slow losses.”

“Approximately 208,000 cubic yards of material will be placed at Beneficial Use Site J, which will eventually become a 56-acre marsh site,” said Jones. “The goal is to increase the amount of marsh habitat in the refuge which is especially important in the Aransas Bay area considering the endangered Whooping Crane travels from Canada each year to winter there.”

The Corps dredges this particular area of the GIWW between June and October as to not disturb the endangered Whooping Crane, according to Jones.

McConnell rationalized that the wild population of Whooping Cranes continues to increase while more Whooper habitat is being destroyed or degraded along the Texas coast. So, projects such as dredging the GIWW can serve more than one purpose. Friends of the Wild Whoopers is hopeful that the USACE dredging project will increase habitat as planned.

friendsofthewildwhoopers.org logo

friendsofthewildwhoopers.org

***** FOTWW’s mission is to help preserve and protect the Aransas/Wood Buffalo
population of wild whooping cranes and their habitat. *****
Friends of the Wild Whoopers is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization.

 

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