Let's Go Birding and Visit the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge.

[NNadir]

Here's a nice picture of some Sand Hill Cranes:



The other crane that shows up (far more rarely) is the Whooping Crane.

The total number of Whooping Cranes on the entire planet, counting breeding captives, is 535.

http://www.operationmigration.org/Whooping_Crane_Count.html">Census and location of all the world's whooping cranes.

This makes the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge a very special place, no?

http://www.refugewatch.org/2008/01/15/wind-farm-threatens-horicon-nwr/">You can learn more about the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge Here.

Actually, there are more whooping cranes than there used to be. A decade or so, there were less than 50 of them. Still, there are some whiny "doomer" types running around saying wild things like, say this:

Threats faced by the Whooping crane flock are growing. In addition to ongoing sea level rise that would make the marshes too deep for the cranes to use, decreased inflows from the Guadalupe River due to water withdrawals for human uses threaten to reduce bay productivity and negatively impact blue crabs, the main food of Whooping cranes. Housing developments are springing up next to marshes where wintering cranes have foraged in the past, and wildlife officials are questioning whether the Whooping crane flock will have enough room to expand to reach recovery targets.

In the migration corridor, the cranes are facing a proliferation of wind farms and associated power lines. Collisions with power lines are the number one cause of mortality for fledged Whooping cranes, and the miles of lines continues to grow substantially.

The Whooping cranes spend every winter at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and nearby marshes, with the first birds arriving starting in mid-October and staying through mid-April. Twice a year they complete a 2,500-mile migration to and from their nesting grounds in Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories of Canada.

The text immediately above comes from some whiny bastards at http://www.wisconservation.org/index.php?page=Updates">Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin.

The bold however has nothing to do with them. It comes from me.

They could really use some straightening out by light weight bloggers with no science education who can cite papers by Mark Z. Jacobson.

Anyway, if you have a chance to see a Whooping Crane in the wild, that would be a real star on your life list.

If not, well then you can see a nice photograph of one of the last whooping cranes on the planet in the wild by clicking http://www.windaction.org/pictures/13591">on this link, provided, as a service, to all my good friends (and not so good friends) here at E&E.

Have a nice evening.

[handmade34]

1. Baker Sanctuary in Bellevue Michigan

is approx. 10 miles from my house in Michigan. Thanks for the great article. I grew up in Michigan and never saw Sandhills cranes as I was growing up. I returned for a visit a few years ago and started to see the Cranes out in fields and now they frequent the backyard of my place in Eaton Rapids.

I worked in Texas the past few years for a few weeks at a time and spent time at the Anahuac NWR... didn't see whooping cranes but sure would have like to...

http://www.bakersanctuary.org/#count

[Kolesar]

2. Meanwhile, Mr Sarcastic is advocating heating all homes in New Jersey with nuclear

which will require more power lines.

flame bait

[NNadir]

4. I guess Mr. HONEST doesn't understand how electricity works.

That's not surprising, really. There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who understands the first thing about energy.

New Jersey could replace all of its dangerous fossil fuel plants and not build ONE new transmission line.

In fact, we could reduce the number of power lines.

It's a function of energy/mass density, about which, understandably the anti-nukes know zero, since it involves an arithmetical operation.

[Kolesar]

5. When your arguement collapses, you lie and deflect

YOU are the poster who advocated heating homes with nuclear energy.

It's not a question of replacing "all of its dangerous fossil fuel plants ".

[wtmusic]

6. Where did you get the idea it would "require more power lines"?

Did you just make that up?

[Kolesar]

7. How else to replace gas and oil heating for homes and offices?

A huge amount of energy would have to be generated and transported.

[wtmusic]

8. The service lines already in place are more than adequate. nt

[Kolesar]

9. How so? If we only heat our homes at night?

Using "off peak" capacity?
What about charging electric vehicles?

[Kolesar]

10. delete

[kestrel91316]

3. I've been to Horicon. Oh, and you don't fool any of us. You don't care about

the cranes or any other birds - you care about attacking those who oppose nuclear power, and you probably care about profiting from nuclear power.