It’s too soon to say what the long-term impacts of earlier wildfires might be on the world’s only natural wild migratory whooping crane flock.
But scientists could be a step closer to finding out after a wildfire in Wood Buffalo National Park came near a handful of the endangered species’ nests.
While whooping cranes are wildfire resilient, the timing of the fire is concerning. The crane’s were still incubating their eggs when it sparked in late May, and it wasn’t declared held until mid-June.
“It may impact individuals’ nest success,” said Dan Rafla, resource conservation manager for Wood Buffalo National Park.
However, “we’re fairly confident the impacts to the population are not significant with this fire.”
Rafla and other experts say, the story of the Wood Buffalo-Aransas whooping crane population is — as of now — a success story.
“But there’s still a lot of work to be done to ensure that that population is resilient and can sustain itself for generations,” he said.
Nearly extinct in the 1940s, the Wood Buffalo-Aransas flock is rebounding — from 16 cranes to now about 550 birds.
Each spring, the flock travels 4,000 kilometres from the birds’ winter home in Texas to their nesting grounds in Wood Buffalo National Park, which straddles northern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories.
Whooping crane nesting habitat is a matrix of shallow wetland made up of coffee and rust-coloured ponds separated by willows and spruce trees. From the air, the honeycomb-like mosaic is a refuge for whooping cranes.
“It truly has been a wonderful success story to see this population bouncing back. But we’re still only talking about approximately 550 birds,” said Diana Christie, the program conservation manager for whooping cranes at the Wilder Institute, one of Canada’s leading conservation organizations.
“The reality is that it’s still a very sensitive size for a population when it’s the only successful wild population that exists,” Christie said.
“Every little bit counts.”
Christie is part of a team studying whooping crane nesting success in the park, including the Wilder Institute, Parks Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service.
Much of the larger, known historic fires in the area have happened later in the summer when whooping crane chicks are older, Christie said.
Since 2022, the research team has used remote cameras to monitor crane behaviour, from laying their eggs to raising their chicks.
They also observe what’s happening around them, like predators and environmental impacts, such as weather, drought and wildfires.
Because this year’s fire started when adult cranes would have been incubating their eggs, any chicks that survived likely wouldn’t have been able to flee if the flames came close, Christie said.
“It is entirely possible that those cranes managed to stay at their nest and that their nests survived the fire, but we just don’t know yet.”
Either way, scientists should soon get a rare glimpse of how nesting whooping cranes react to fire.
“This is the first time in decades that we’ve seen such a large fire within the nesting grounds that is potentially impacting nests and maybe young chicks,” said Mark Bidwell, senior wildlife biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.
One nest camera is located near the fire.
“If that camera has survived, which we expect it has given its location, it’ll be very interesting to learn more about how the birds have responded to the fire,” he said, including smoke and heat.
Bidwell says they don’t know how the parents would — or did — react.
“If the parents were to leave for any length of time, those chicks probably wouldn’t make it. And so the parents would only leave if they were in a dire situation themselves,” said Bidwell.
Scientists also want to learn how the nests themselves help, as they’re engineered from vegetation like cattails and bulrush.
“It’s almost like they have a moat surrounding them,” said Bidwell.
The research team plans to retrieve the cameras in September, once the cranes expand their range before migrating south.
What they learn could help shape future management efforts, Bidwell says.
“If fires are more frequent because of increased drought, which may be influenced by climate change, then those more frequent fires or more intense fires could have an effect on the population.”
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Ronnie Schaefer, a member of the Salt River First Nation, has been observing whooping cranes in the park and on his traditional territory near Fort Smith, N.W.T., for decades.
“I kind of just fell in love with the noise of them and how beautiful these big white birds are,” he said, while out birding in June.
He’s eager to know how the cranes fared during the wildfire.
“Even losing one nest to a wildfire like this, it’ll be devastating for the whole flock,” said Schaefer.
Parks Canada will get an early indication of the whooping cranes’ resiliency when it conducts a survey in July to count the number of fledglings.
