Arrival at Halpata - Class of 2008

January 22, 2009

Aerial view of the pen at Hapata Nature Preserve.

On January 22, 2009, the 2008 cohort of young whooping cranes destined for Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) arrived at their final migration stopover location at the Halpata Tastanaki Preserve. Since 2006, the Whooping crane eastern partnership (WCEP) has utilized the Halpata site as an interim stopover location en route to Chassahowitzka. The Halpata site was established to solve problems we had previously encountered due to older cranes visiting the pen at Chassahowitzka and causing trouble with the younger birds.

Chassahowitzka NWR has been used as the release site for WCEP whooping cranes since the beginning of the project in 2001. Chassahowitzka was selected because the pen site is not accessible by the public, naive juveniles can be effectively protected from predators, physical facilities are ideal, and movements of juveniles can be controlled because habitat conditions limit dispersal. Because of tidal fluctuations, salinity, unstable or rocky bottom substrates, and general habitat dominance by needlerush, this area actually offers poor habitat for wintering whooping cranes. Many returning older Whooping cranes routinely visit the pen site each year, but do not remain in the area and instead winter in other habitats located inland. This pattern has been advantageous to the reintroduction by allowing this release site to be used year after year.

In the past, the new class of ultralight led young-of-year chicks sometimes arrived at Chassahowitzka while the adult Whooping cranes were still passing through during their fall migration. The activity and food at the pen site often encouraged the older cranes to stay, and they were at times overly aggressive towards the younger birds and interfered with their access to the food provided for their use. To address this problem, WCEP found a second site and constructed a new pen near Dunnellon 26 miles to the northeast of the Chassahowitzka pen site. This property is owned by the South West Florida Water Management District and known as Halpata Tastanaki Preserve. This site was established to hold the chicks until the older birds have left the Chassahowitzka pen or possibly as a new site where the birds would spend the winter if older birds remained at Chassahowitzka.

Halpata is now used annually as a holding site until older Whooping cranes have completed their fall migration and have settled on their winter territories; and if the older birds have completed migration prior to the arrival of the ultralight led chicks, Halpata is used as a stop-over on the way to Chassahowitzka. The Dunnellon Airport which is just north of Halpata, has hosted an “Arrival Event” celebrating the completion of the ultralight migration and providing a great venue to observe the ultralights leading the whooping cranes on one of their last legs of their first migration into Florida.

It is estimated that the pen construction cost was $25,000, of which 80% was through in-kind donations of materials and volunteer time (800 hours) from the Southwest Florida Water Management District, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, USFWS, Jacksonville Zoological Gardens and Disney's Animal Kingdom.

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Last updated: June 3, 2009