[LINK] "Whooping cranes are pretty terrible parents. Are humans to blame?"

[rfmcdonald]

The Washington Post's Karen Brulliard notes notes that a much-hyped program to help whooping crane populations recover has failed, as it turns out humans can't teach the birds how to parent their young.

For 15 years, whooping crane chicks have been hand-raised by scientists wearing white whooping crane costumes in Maryland, shipped to Wisconsin and taught to migrate by other white-robed people, before they are led south to Florida by costumed volunteer pilots flying ultralight aircraft.

It was one of the most quirky, beloved and interventionist American conservation efforts, meant to build a migratory population of endangered whooping cranes in eastern North America without making them used to humans. This month, the final graduating class of six young birds was released — yes, by people in white costumes — at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in northern Florida.

The program is ending, largely because whooping cranes have turned out to be lousy parents.

“They can establish pairs, they know how to mate, they can copulate, and they know how to lay eggs,” said Peter J. Fasbender, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field supervisor for Minnesota and Wisconsin. “They’re just incapable of parenting.”

In the past 11 years, the eastern population has grown to about 100 birds, but it has managed only to fledge 10 chicks. The culprit, government biologists think, is what made the program the fascination of legions of schoolchildren who followed it: the disguised people and the aircraft leading cranes. Though they never spoke to the birds and also directed them with crane puppets, Fish and Wildlife decided that humans were still too involved in teaching the cranes how to live. In January, the agency announced that this year’s would be the last ultralight-led migration.