They're part of the 2010 class of Operation Migration, an organization that teaches migration routes to cranes that don't have older birds to learn from. Once they fly the route, they'll be able to make it year after year without guidance, according to NPR's "Weekend Edition."
Just a few decades ago, the whooping crane's North American numbers were disturbingly low. According to Operation Migration, a population of about 1,400 birds in 1860 plummeted to one of only 15 in 1941. While the wild flock's numbers had increased by the late '90s, the entire population relied on the same breeding and wintering locations (Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast). Since the birds were quite literally putting all their eggs in one basket, scientists needed to establish separate populations to protect the crane's future.
So the Whooping Crane Recovery Team (WCRT) set out to make that happen. Working through the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Service, the group protects the natural Aransas/Wood Buffalo flock, oversees two new alternate migrating flocks and also works with a non-migrating flock established in Florida in 1993.
This year, every bird in Operation Migration's 2010 group made it south safely.
Image credit: These whooping cranes make a practice run in Necedah, Wis., before heading south. (Jeffery Phelps/Getty Images)
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