It's the high-danger season for fledgling whooping crane population

The most dangerous season for Louisiana’s experimental whooping population is here.
People flocking to the fields for the hunting season add to the birds’ natural threats of weather and predators.
As they move around Southwest Louisiana, the whopping cranes pose a tempting target to some who like to shoot at anything that moves.
The birds are large -- standing five feet, weighing 15 pounds or so and with a wing span of 7 to 8 feet -- and not something seen every day.
The fact that they are not common, of course, is what the Department of Wildlife & Fisheries’ Non-Essential Experimental Population project is about.
Biologist Carrie Salyers briefed the Eunice Rotary Club recently on the background and status of the project.
She noted there are only about 600 of the whooping cranes left in North America, the remnants of a once hefty population.
Conversion of their marshland habitat to agricultural uses and the popularity of their plumage for fashion of the day led to their demise.
By 1950, only one crane remained in Louisiana’s non-migratory population and it was captured at White Lake and taken to Aransas (Texas) National Wildlife Refuge, where it died a short while later.
For the last half of the 20th Century and the first decade of the 21st, their were no whooping cranes in Louisiana.
That changed when 10 juvenile cranes were released in the White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area in Vermilion Parish.
Setbacks and all, the population three years later stands at 50 in the state.
To reach a self-sustaining population requires about 120 individuals and 30 productive pairs (they mate for life) with those levels maintained for 10 years without additional re-stocking.
The numbers reinforce the uphill climb that project enthusiasts, and the birds, have, but Salyers and others are optimistic.
“When we put the first birds out, we had something back we had not had for 60 years. That is worth doing, but takes time,” she said, noting the public education process continues.
It is several years after hatching before a female whooping crane is ready to reproduce, meaning it must survive the various threats before it even reaches reproductive age.
The next cohort of cranes arrives in December.