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Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership
External Program Review - Final Report
31 March 2010
The External Program Review report is a 152-page document. Below is the Executive Summary. Click here to view or download the complete Report (1.4MB PDF ).
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership (WCEP) was organized in 1999 in response to recommendations from the International Whooping Crane Recovery Team (IWCRT) to establish a migratory, self-sustaining population of whooping cranes in eastern North America. The Eastern Migratory Population (EMP) is to serve as a second, independent population to ensure the long-term viability of whooping cranes (Grus americana). The plan and recommendations from the IWCRT were to release 10–25 juvenile cranes annually for at least 10 years, using several strategies to teach migration including: 1) leading them by ultralight aircraft (UL) to a chosen wintering site in Florida; 2) releasing them with migrating wild whooping cranes (Direct Autumn Release- DAR), or 3) some combination of these or other techniques.
WCEP has achieved substantial successes toward achieving their goals, with 105 individuals now in the population as of March 2010, and high survival rates for both juveniles and adults. The program has clearly demonstrated the success of establishing a new migratory flyway by training juvenile whooping cranes to migrate following ultralight aircraft which in turn has permitted the pursuit of the DAR strategy. Supporting these release efforts are the successful breeding and rearing of chicks in captivity from a captive flock, and improvements in health care, disease identification, and bird handling. Released cranes are now pairing, establishing breeding territories, nesting, laying fertile eggs, and at least initiating incubation, all with apparently normal behaviors. The regular fledging of chicks, however, still eludes the program. The WCEP partners have also developed strong public relations and education activities. Outreach efforts have generated greater awareness among the public of endangered whooping cranes and the importance of habitat preservation and responsible stewardship.
WCEP is now at a critical juncture and the challenges faced by WCEP are increasing in complexity and intensity. Low reproductive success, uncertainties about nesting ecology, rearing and survival of chicks to fledging, and questions about effects of rearing techniques on the behavior of released birds contribute to concerns about the program’s potential for success. On the organizational side, the partnership is showing signs of stress; there is insufficient science to support decisions, limited resources to deal with an expanding population, inertia to change, limited data-sharing, communication problems, and internal politics.
To address these concerns, the Project Direction Team (PDT) of WCEP, representing its nine partner organizations, requested a Review of the program and charged the Review Team with evaluating three core issues: 1) whether WCEP is operating in a way that will achieve the restoration of an eastern migratory of whooping cranes; 2) the scientific underpinning of WCEP’s methods and procedures; and 3) the methods and procedures that WCEP currently uses for decision making, internal communication, planning and executing management decisions.
The Review Team used complementary survey methodologies (web and phone surveys) to gain as wide a perspective as possible and to focus on areas of greatest concern for the program. In addition, we conducted site visits to key locations where active whooping crane management occurs, attended WCEP meetings and reviewed pertinent literature. Our recommendations were derived from a synthesis of survey results and direct input from WCEP members, field technicians and invested personnel as well as input from outside experts in crane biology, reintroduction ecology, habitat assessment and demographic analyses. We summarize our findings in six categories: 1) Use of Science, 2) Habitat, 3) Captive Whooping Crane Management, 4) Wild Whooping Crane Management, 5) WCEP Organizational Issues, and 6) WCEP Process Issues.
The recommendations that follow are listed in order of priority within each category.
Use of Science
We identified problems related to data collection, sharing, management, and analysis, and information transfer to other partners as well as to the larger conservation community. Combined, these problems have culminated in a situation where the available information is insufficient to support sound decisions in a transparent, scientific manner. Moreover, science planning and prioritization in WCEP has been generally absent or conducted on an ad hoc basis, relying on the expertise of individuals within the program. WCEP has not followed adaptive management practices, which is a structured, iterative process of optimal decision-making that integrates design, management, and monitoring to test assumptions systematically in order to learn, reduce certainties over time, and adapt. We found WCEP to be too insular and needing an infusion of external scientific expertise to advise and review research priorities, plans, and results. WCEP needs to be more flexible and opportunistic in its approach to problem-solving through various approaches, such as temporary task forces of external and WCEP individuals to tackle new problems as they arise.
Recommendations
• Establish a standing Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of outside scientists (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey scientists and university faculty) to advise the PDT and use ad hoc committees, technical forums, and workshops involving outside scientists and WCEP members to address specific science issues, such as black flies, to identify uncertainties, and to set both short- and long-term priorities.
• Further develop and implement whooping crane monitoring strategies and protocols.
• Improve methods for data collection, management, analysis, and information transfer across all Teams.
• Strengthen the application of adaptive management by facilitating monitoring and research that is purpose-driven and evidence-based.
• Utilize a structured decision-making process, where appropriate, to develop more organized analyses of problems, alternative approaches, and decisions.
Habitat
The program to create an EMP is based on limited knowledge of historic whooping crane habitats and their variability over time and space, as well as an incomplete understanding of the historic distribution of the species. Additionally, there are numerous gaps in our understanding of the basic biology of the species including behavior, bioenergetics, and habitat use for all life cycle events. The lack of knowledge of habitats – both historic and contemporary – in which this large, highly mobile species must now meet its life cycle challenges in a sea of highly modified habitats has compromised many WCEP decisions, especially initial site selection for breeding and wintering. The focus on site selection was based on size, lack of human disturbance, acceptance and support of the program, and the potential and/or availability of facilities and landing sites for ultralight aircraft and not on a thorough analysis of habitat use, long-term wetland productivity or the dynamics and distribution of historic habitats.
There is considerable uncertainty currently among WCEP members about whether Wisconsin’s Necedah National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is an appropriate location for the reintroduction effort. While much of the current debate is focused on the impact black flies may have on nesting cranes, the area’s ability to provide the necessary food resources for breeding cranes has also been recognized as a potential limiting factor. In addition, the current management required to provide the conditions chosen for certain aspects of this reintroduction effort (e.g., the pen sites and water inputs required for the ultralight and DAR operations) compromises habitat productivity. While some have advocated finding a new release site for the EMP, efforts to evaluate proposed sites seem to be limited in scope and forethought.
The Review Team believes that recovery of a viable wild population of whooping cranes requires a truly holistic ecological approach that is interdisciplinary and recognizes biotic and abiotic conditions across a large spatial and temporal scale.
Recommendations
• Explicitly include habitat expertise within the PDT and its component Teams.
• A more comprehensive focus on habitats is required for successful establishment of a viable wild population of whooping cranes at relocation sites whether current or future. Habitat-based studies on natural (Aransas/Wood Buffalo) as well as current (Necedah NWR) and potential reintroduction sites should be conducted.
Captive Whooping Crane Management
The goals of the current management strategy for the production of whooping cranes have been to produce as many chicks per year as is feasible; thus, management has focused on artificial insemination, artificial incubation and artificial rearing. The program has been successful in maintaining a viable captive flock and providing 25–30 chicks per year for the WCEP efforts. The captive population has been managed appropriately over its lifetime, using the most up-to-date demographic and genetic tools available to it at each phase. Recent molecular analyses suggesting that founders may be more related than hitherto believed which could limit future pairings are preliminary and would greatly benefit from additional data collection and analysis.
There are increasing demands for larger cohorts of whooping crane chicks to expand the DAR program, initiate a dedicated parent-rearing (PR) study, and begin planning for a proposed release in Louisiana to create a third non-migratory flock. Available data indicate that chick production at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center (WRC) and International Crane Foundation (ICF) is at or very near capacity, which will clearly limit WCEP’s ability to allocate a sufficient number of chicks to the aforementioned programs.
The approaches used to produce eggs, and rear and train chicks (costume rearing) have proved successful, in that enough chicks are produced annually to support current reintroduction program needs. On the other hand, such success likely has limited further experimentation to improve the breeding and rearing of cranes. We strongly support the new effort to look at the impact of parent-rearing on survival, migration and reproductive success in the wild and to evaluate whether there are other more cost-effective methods for producing and rearing chicks.
The Review Team has noted the existence of some underlying assumptions that may never have been tested and have had a major impact on decision-making and implementation of activities. Examples include the assumptions that socialization of chicks into groups has no impact on later survival and reproduction; habituation to humans (without costumes) during rearing will have a negative effect on survival and behavior; and “wildness” and fear of humans is critical for survival and successful reproduction. We believe that these assumptions need explicit testing.
Recommendations
• Allocate a majority of chicks produced over the coming five years to DAR and PR programs, with the UL program being allocated a sufficient number of chicks to permit their continued activity and for purposes of comparative study.
• Consider costs and benefits of using eggs obtained from the Aransas-Wood Buffalo population to satisfy future demand and increase genetic diversity of the captive flock.
• Identify mechanisms by which egg production across existing and potential WCEP partners can be increased to accommodate annual demand.
• Determine the age at which imprinting to humans may no longer be a problem (initially using sandhill cranes as a model) and consider the implications for crane management of no longer implementing costume-rearing through and beyond release.
• Continue to use all data at hand (pedigrees from leg-banding and molecular information), in combination with proper demographic and population genetic analysis (i.e., master planning), to ensure responsible management of the captive whooping crane resource.
• If feasible, expand molecular analysis of the captive whooping crane studbook (i.e., larger number of microsatellite loci) to improve estimates of founder relatedness in the captive population.
Wild Whooping Crane Management
Management of juvenile whooping cranes during their first migration following release is directly related to their release strategy. UL birds are controlled during migration while DAR, and eventually parent-reared (PR) birds, will be free to migrate as they choose. Depending on their release protocol (UL, DAR, or PR) juveniles are either allowed to winter in sites they select or are managed in penned areas on St. Marks and Chassahowitzka NWR’s in Florida. Few data are available or have been evaluated to identify factors related to management of free-flying cranes that may affect reproduction in whooping cranes at Necedah NWR, making it difficult to evaluate which management techniques are most biologically successful and cost effective.
One of the current requirements of establishing an EMP is to maintain complete separation between a population established from captive-bred birds from the wild, naturally occurring Aransas-Wood Buffalo Population (AWBP) of whooping cranes. The Review Team believes that it would be beneficial to conduct a formal risk assessment concerning the likelihood of a catastrophic disease transmission event if the populations meet and evaluate the potential impact on population viability for both populations from disease transmission versus the benefits of genetic and demographic augmentation from flock mixing. We are aware that relaxing the requirement of separation of the AWBP and any reintroduced population would require re-designating the EMP birds which are now considered an experimental non-essential population under Section 10(j) of the ESA which requires geographic distinction of the populations (Canadian Wildlife Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2007), however, the Review Team thinks it might be time to begin to explore the implications of a future re-designation.
Recommendations
• Develop and conduct scientifically sound observational and experimental studies of the EMP within an adaptive management framework to investigate factors affecting whooping crane breeding ecology and success.
• Conduct comparative studies of the breeding ecology, migratory behavior, energetic requirements, and habitat use of whooping cranes of the AWBP and the EMP to better understand whooping crane ecology and the affects of EMP management on breeding success.
• Conduct rigorous scientific comparisons of the behavioral ecology, survival, and reproductive success across existing and proposed rearing techniques (UL, DAR, PR) – over a period of at least seven years – to determine which technique results in the highest levels of whooping crane recruitment and successful reproduction. Additionally, use the results from comparative rearing studies to determine which method(s) would ultimately prove most cost effective in terms of future allocation of resources (chicks and money) with the smallest impact on refuge habitat integrity.
• Determine the cost-effectiveness of relocating widely dispersing captive-bred birds on their ultimate survival, pairing, and reproductive success.
• Permit wild-hatched birds to disperse without recapture (i.e., let them find alternative breeding areas within the EMP flyway).
• In advance of establishing any additional population within or near the EMP, a detailed quantitative risk assessment should be conducted that weighs predicted benefits of separation from the AWBP (e.g., minimizing disease transmission risk) against the potential costs of that separation (e.g., minimizing genetic and demographic augmentation).
WCEP Organizational Issues
WCEP is a Partnership of diverse agencies and organizations with the single theme of successfully creating an eastern migratory population of whooping cranes. Within this single objective are multiple functions. Both the number (about 13) and diversity of agencies, the size of the staff and the range of functions make the creation of a single smoothly functioning organization an enormous challenge. WCEP must be congratulated for its efforts to manage such a level of complexity.
There is no doubt that the participants in WCEP are an incredibly dedicated group of people with a passion for the goal of creating an eastern migratory population. But, organizations work only as well as the people within them and thus a clear structure and process are exceedingly important to achieve success. Through both surveys and discussions with participants, the Review Team determined that there is a lack of confidence in the structure and leadership of the program and that collaboration across the whole of the whooping crane recovery program could be improved. Due to the structure (and process), the Review Team found minimal accountability for success or failure within Teams or the PDT.
Recommendations
• WCEP should restructure itself and the PDT to become a more efficient and effective vehicle for information assembly, analysis, and decision-making (see text of full report for specific recommendations).
• The PDT should act more like a Board of Directors than is the case currently, focusing on strategic planning, implementation, and program evaluation.
• The current draft Guidance Document should be re-written and adopted by the WCEP membership so that the organization of WCEP and the roles and responsibilities of the partners are clear.
• Reduce overlap between the IWCRT and the PDT.
• Consider hiring a full-time Management Coordinator to help maximize the efficiency and productivity of WCEP’s personnel resources.
• Provide training to PDT members and Team Leaders in group dynamics, “group norms” of behavior, and methods to increase cooperation and collaboration as well as leadership.
WCEP Process Issues
Wildlife conservation projects like WCEP are equally dependent on the conscious application of basic principles of human social dynamics if they are to be successful. Discussions around data and their application to management must be properly structured; decisions must be made systematically and with full input from all participants; communication of information and decisions must be timely and thorough.
Review Team findings indicate that, in general, the WCEP membership believes the overall decision-making process is not functioning adequately. Specifically, decision-making by consensus (the current modus operandi) is not serving the needs of the partnership, and the decisions that result from this process are not transparent. The PDT is making decisions that should be in the hands of the Teams.
In participatory processes, proper facilitation of group discussions is critical to the success of the process. Those PDT members currently assuming this role have done so with admirable skill and enthusiasm. There are, however, two main problems with the current approach. Firstly, current WCEP meeting facilitators lack the detailed experience and expertise required to handle potential conflicts. Secondly, the person who assumes the role of meeting or group facilitator should ideally have little to no involvement in the issue or stake in the outcome of a given decision.
The diversity of expertise and perspective of WCEP’s members requires a clear strategic direction to promote progress in the scientific and organizational aspects of the partnership. WCEP currently needs a stronger sense of shared purpose among partners, clearer priorities across varied (and sometimes antagonistic) objectives and alternatives, and identified unambiguous activities with definitive timeframes and identification of responsible parties for implementation of activities.
The flat organizational (non-hierarchical structure) has resulted in issues related to organizational accountability and, by extension, responsibility for the successes or failures of the partnership as a whole. There is no formal accountability for success or failure.
The breadth of membership in WCEP, both in geography and expertise, requires effective communication of data, information and ideas in order to make more informed decisions and to keep the partnership engaged and connected. The Partnership does an excellent job of communicating its mission, goals, and activities to the external conservation community and the general public. However, there appear to be impediments to effective communication within WCEP itself.
It is clear that education/outreach will play a vital role in the long-term success of whooping crane conservation efforts, but there are relatively few ideas about how this program component can contribute to addressing the short-term scientific issues threatening EMP establishment and management.
The Review Team could find no recent centralized budget information for the whole of WCEP and there are no centralized funds held by the PDT that could be allocated to emergency needs or to high priority research projects. Without a source of centralized funds, the PDT’s ability to influence activities is limited, despite decisions that they may make. Moreover, there does not appear to be a strategic plan for fund-raising, including a list or cost breakdown of the highest priority needs. Budgetary issues for WCEP or the WC Recovery Program as a whole are confined to a black box. This program has serious resource limitations, yet, there is no central strategic plan for overcoming these funding deficiencies. Given the lack of a transparent budget and the lack of prioritization within the program, there is absolutely no way to measure cost effectiveness of this program at any real scale.
Recommendations
• In accordance with the WCEP Guidance Document, the PDT should consider divesting primary decision-making responsibility to the appropriate teams.
• The PDT should revise its internal procedures to become more effective in group dynamics and long-term planning.
• Develop a protocol for annual evaluation of WCEP member activities, with continued participation in the Partnership contingent on consistent performance. The recommended restructuring of the PDT with a Chair that has both scientific expertise and decision-making authority would put that new Chair is in a position to assume the lead role in Partner evaluations.
• Improve mechanisms of communication both within and outside WCEP.
• Have the Communication / Outreach Team continue to work closely with partner fundraisers and develop a joint fund-raising team to improve the flow of financial resources to WCEP operations as well as to identify new sources of funding.
• Develop a 5-year Strategic Plan to define the highest priority research and conservation needs, with an associated transparent budget including direct and indirect costs.
• Develop a central fund for highest priority research and conservation needs, with the newly-formed Science Advisory Committee to provide perspective.
Finally, and most importantly as a recommendation, the Review Team believes that the Recovery Team and WCEP should continue the EMP reintroduction effort at Necedah NWR, building upon the successes enjoyed during this first decade of effort. These activities – including releases of juveniles, bird monitoring, and research on crane biology and habitat ecology – should continue for a minimum of five and, perhaps more realistically, ten more years to allow the population to reach greater maturity so that we can determine realistically the potential for long-term reproductive success at Necedah NWR.
The External Program Review report is a 152-page document. Below is the Executive Summary. Click here to view or download the complete Report (1.4MB PDF ).
Last updated:
April 9, 2010