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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will stop supporting the use of ultralight aircraft to help young whooping cranes migrate from Wisconsin to Florida each fall. [...] Operation Migration, the Canadian-based nonprofit group that has led the migrations for 15 years, has opposed the end of ultralights, saying the program has helped cranes survive. But Fish and Wildlife officials the birds haven't been successful in producing chicks and raising them in the wild. The effort has spent more than $20 million to establish the flock that's distinct from a larger flock of whooping cranes migrating between the Texas...

In a bid to save the endangered whooping crane, biologists and self-taught conservationists are donning hooded costumes and taking to the skies to lead the birds on their annual migration.

Endangered Crane Survives Florida Storms Monday February 5, 2007 2:01 AM By CARRIE ANTLFINGER Associated Press Writer MILWAUKEE (AP) - A whooping crane was spotted alive on Sunday after it was believed killed with 17 others in severe Florida storms, according to an organizer of a migratory project. Organizers received a signal from a transmitter on the young male crane on Saturday night and again on Sunday near where the endangered birds were kept in Citrus County, Fla. Later Sunday, they saw the survivor with two sandhill cranes, said Rachel Levin, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service....

MILWAUKEE - All 18 young whooping cranes led south from Wisconsin by ultralight aircraft last fall were killed in storms that hit Florida, dealing a devastating blow to a project to create a second migratory flock of the endangered birds in North American, a spokesman said. The cranes were being kept in an enclosure at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River, Fla., when the storms moved in and intensified Thursday night, said Joe Duff, senior pilot and co-founder of Operation Migration, a nonprofit organization coordinating the project. "The birds were checked in late afternoon the day before, and...

Conservationists are considering the reintroduction of the endangered whooping crane to Louisiana, which hosted one of the few remaining colonies of the birds in the 1930s. The Whooping Crane Conservation Association and the Whooping Crane Recovery Team — a group of Canadian and U.S. crane experts — will meet in Lafayette next week to explore the possibility of starting a new colony of one the world’s rarest birds. “It’s like bringing the dinosaurs back,” said Mary Lynch Courville, secretary of the Whooping Crane Conservation Association. Her father, John J. Lynch, documented the last known instance of whooping cranes breeding...