Migrations

[00:00:00] Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen.

[00:00:13] Welcome to Listen Here, a podcast about the soundscapes around us and the stories they tell us about the places where we find ourselves.

[00:00:21] I'm your host, Kristen Page.

[00:00:33] As I listen to soundscapes, I hear the whisperings of stories about the places where I find myself.

[00:00:41] Some stories are easier to hear than others.

[00:00:46] Every spring and fall, I eagerly anticipate the wonderful rattles and bugles of sandhill cranes flying over my Midwestern home on their migration to and from the wintering grounds.

[00:01:02] Sandhill cranes are tall gray birds with rusty patterns on their sides, pale cheeks, and a red crown.

[00:01:12] Crane vocalizations can travel over two miles, so unsurprisingly, I often hear cranes before I see them.

[00:01:20] And I find myself in parking lots looking up while turning in circles, my own crane dance of sorts.

[00:01:30] This seasonal traveling symphony is ancient.

[00:01:33] The oldest fossils of a sandhill crane are more than two million years old.

[00:01:51] Aldo Leopold contemplated similar ideas in his essays collected in a Sand County Almanac.

[00:01:56] He writes,

[00:02:59] As I listen to the migration of cranes, I hear the whisperings of stories about survival, recovery, and the importance of conservation.

[00:03:24] Aldo Leopold describes places where there are no more cranes as places where the sadness discernible in some marshes arises, perhaps from their once having harbored cranes.

[00:03:39] Now they stand humbled, adrift in history.

[00:03:42] The sound of migrating cranes traveling migration pathways before European expansion through North America must have been amazing.

[00:04:01] It is estimated that there were more than 10,000 whooping cranes migrating with the hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes.

[00:04:08] But by the 1940s, there were only 20 whooping cranes left.

[00:04:13] If whooping cranes can be considered a sentinel species, the silencing of the whoopers is loudly speaking to the consequences of rapid landscape transformations for biodiversity.

[00:04:26] Migrations take place over thousands of miles and many types of landscapes.

[00:04:31] Cranes need places to stop over and feed and rest.

[00:04:35] These places are so important to the success of migratory species, and as we see changes in land use throughout migration pathways, there had to be conservation interventions implemented.

[00:04:46] Even so, the disappearance of wetlands, the appearance of wind farms, the changing patterns of agriculture, all continue, and all may impact the successful migrations of cranes and other birds.

[00:05:04] Numerous conservation and land management initiatives worked together to protect birds like the cranes.

[00:05:10] In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge system at Pelican Island in Florida, along the Indian River Lagoon Estuary.

[00:05:24] It was originally established to protect the nesting grounds of brown pelicans and the surrounding brackish estuary.

[00:05:32] Today, it includes more than 5,000 acres of waters and protects thousands of species, including federally protected threatened species.

[00:05:47] The National Wildlife Refuge System protects land and waters in every U.S. state and territory, including vitally important areas for migration stopovers.

[00:05:58] With more than 500 protected areas in the system, these lands play an important role in protecting migratory species.

[00:06:06] In addition to protected lands, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 prohibits taking, possessing, importing, exporting, transporting, selling, purchasing, bartering any migratory parts of birds, nests, or eggs without a permit.

[00:06:33] According to the Audubon Society, this act is responsible for saving many species, including sandhill cranes, from extinction.

[00:06:41] But for species like whooping cranes, more help was needed.

[00:06:55] Whooping cranes are one of the best success stories of conservation via the Endangered Species Act.

[00:07:01] They were listed as threatened in 1967 and endangered in 1970 under the Endangered Species Preservation Act that was in place before the Endangered Species Act was signed into law in 1973.

[00:07:16] While the legislation that has protected lands and species has been important in the survival of whooping cranes,

[00:07:23] there are a lot of other heroes who have played critical roles in survival, especially the International Crane Foundation,

[00:07:29] that has been working to protect cranes and their habitat for over 50 years.

[00:07:34] Now there are more than 500 whooping cranes, and there was even a proposal in 2023 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reclassify them from endangered to threatened.

[00:07:49] I saw my first whooping crane in March of 2020.

[00:07:53] It was the weekend before the lockdown.

[00:07:55] My family and I were out walking at a local forest preserve,

[00:07:59] trying to get in one last outing as we anticipated being stuck at home for an indiscernible future.

[00:08:06] Large groups of sandhill cranes were flying over, and I was taking a lot of photos.

[00:08:10] I always take a lot of photos, but never too many.

[00:08:14] As I looked at the small image on the back of my camera,

[00:08:17] I was amazed to see that one bird in the V formation was a large white crane with black wingtips, not a sandhill.

[00:08:26] I was so excited to see a whooping crane.

[00:08:29] It felt like a really special moment.

[00:08:31] And considering only three whooping cranes were counted by the Midwest crane count in 2022, I was right.

[00:08:38] It really was special.

[00:08:43] Whooping cranes are the tallest bird in North America, with males reaching 5 feet tall.

[00:08:49] They have beautiful white feathers, except for their wingtips, which are black, and they have a bright red crown.

[00:08:58] Like the sandhill crane, they have a nasally bugle call.

[00:09:01] But the whooping crane has more of a whoop sound, and sandhills have more of a karoo sound.

[00:09:18] The National Wildlife Refuge system protects critical habitat for migratory species,

[00:09:32] but also provides a place where people can experience such species.

[00:09:37] The management strategies of these lands make some important places for recreation and education for those who visit.

[00:09:45] I love to visit National Wildlife Refuges,

[00:09:47] and one I always wanted to visit was Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where whooping cranes overwinter.

[00:09:58] Aransas is on the Gulf Coast of Texas, and was established in 1937,

[00:10:03] specifically for the protection of migratory waterfowl and other species.

[00:10:09] Watching and listening to whooping cranes is an amazing experience.

[00:10:12] When I was there, there were 19 whooping cranes trumpeting all together.

[00:10:30] What an amazing symphony!

[00:10:34] Without the protection of these lands for overwintering,

[00:10:37] and the protection of the many stopovers along the migration route,

[00:10:42] whooping cranes might have been lost, and this soundscape with it.

[00:10:54] Every winter, my family takes a migration of sorts.

[00:10:57] We migrate, along with white pelicans and snow geese, to North Texas.

[00:11:12] At the end of our migration, we often find ourselves at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge.

[00:11:19] I love to go any time of year, but especially in winter,

[00:11:23] because thousands of geese, snow, rosses, and white-fronted,

[00:11:28] come to Hagerman to feed on the winter wheat fields in the refuge.

[00:11:33] These birds migrate from Canada to Texas,

[00:11:36] and I love to visit with them each December when I'm there.

[00:11:40] Being with the snow geese is really our only way to have a white Christmas,

[00:11:44] so it's become a tradition to go on Christmas Day.

[00:11:48] Do you like coming here?

[00:12:02] Even though I make you come almost every day, we're here in Texas?

[00:12:06] I like the noises that the geese make, so...

[00:12:10] I really understood why they call them snow geese,

[00:12:19] because they look like snow when they're all...

[00:12:24] What do you think they're talking about today?

[00:12:29] Um, probably that there's not a bunch of food on the ground.

[00:12:33] Do you know what they eat?

[00:12:35] The grass?

[00:12:36] Yep.

[00:12:37] I see a lot of grass here.

[00:12:39] Yeah, there is a lot of grass.

[00:12:44] The protection of lands that have benefited the cranes

[00:12:48] also benefit the light migratory geese, like snow geese and rosses geese.

[00:12:54] Populations of these species have been increasing over recent decades,

[00:12:58] and in some places, they actually reach numbers that cause damage to the habitat.

[00:13:03] The patterns of agriculture throughout their migratory pathway provides enough food

[00:13:08] to not only help the geese along their migration,

[00:13:11] but enough to supplement some pretty significant population growth.

[00:13:19] How many geese do you think are out there today?

[00:13:23] A lot.

[00:13:28] I'd say there's a few thousand.

[00:13:30] Yeah.

[00:13:32] Thousands of geese stop at Hagerman each winter

[00:13:35] because of the plantings of winter wheat throughout the complex wetland habitat.

[00:13:40] This is just a small part of the North American population,

[00:13:43] which has grown tenfold since the early 1970s.

[00:13:48] At these numbers, snow and rosses geese can cause significant damage

[00:13:52] to the agricultural lands where they stop.

[00:13:56] Certainly, this is a problem, but more importantly,

[00:13:59] the significant increase in population size

[00:14:02] is having a measurable impact on their breeding grounds, the tundra.

[00:14:06] When geese forage, they pull the plants from the roots,

[00:14:11] disturbing soils and possibly impacting biodiversity.

[00:14:14] Maybe the efforts to protect lands have worked too well for these geese,

[00:14:19] which are so flexible and adaptable to habitat change.

[00:14:24] Conservation is always a challenge,

[00:14:26] requiring consideration of what's best for the most vulnerable species,

[00:14:30] like looping cranes,

[00:14:31] but at the same time,

[00:14:33] considering what happens when our strategies have unintended results,

[00:14:37] like the abundance of snow geese.

[00:14:40] Despite unintended consequences of the rise in numbers of snow geese,

[00:14:46] I think that snow geese tell us an important story

[00:14:50] about the connection between conservation and wonder

[00:14:54] as we stand next to thousands and thousands of snow geese,

[00:15:03] as they take flight right over our heads.

[00:15:07] You can't imagine the wonder of that moment.

[00:15:15] I'm so glad that I get to go to places like this,

[00:15:21] to have moments watching snow geese with my child,

[00:15:27] as we wonder about what it's like to be a goose.

[00:15:34] They're funny when they walk.

[00:15:37] They look like they're really proud.

[00:15:49] They're in kind of a V-shape.

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:16:00] It's mesmerizing to see them float.

[00:16:03] Being mesmerized by snow geese and cranes

[00:16:06] is a way to participate in an ancient story.

[00:16:10] I'm glad to be able to live along this migration route.

[00:16:13] I'm glad to be able to take a migration of sorts every Christmas.

[00:16:17] And I'm glad that we have a system of protected lands.

[00:16:21] Being able to participate in migration in some small way,

[00:16:25] as we watch and listen,

[00:16:27] gives us opportunity to think beyond our own human experience

[00:16:31] and contemplate new stories of the places we go.

[00:16:36] I invite you to stop and listen to the soundscapes around you.

[00:16:41] Listen to the stories that our avian neighbors are telling you.

[00:16:45] Stories of changing landscapes and the adaptability of species.

[00:16:50] Stories of how working together,

[00:16:51] we can keep some of our more vulnerable species around

[00:16:55] to sing as they take off on their next migration.

[00:17:13] Until next time, keep your ear to the ground

[00:17:16] and listen here, wherever you go.

[00:17:18] Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen.