The Whooping Crane (Grus americana) is among North America’s most charismatic species. Between 1938 and 2004, the population that migrates between Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and Wood Buffalo National Park (WBNP), grew from 18 to 217 individuals. The recovery plan objective for this endangered species is to downlist the population in 2035, but this requires interpretive assessment of population responses to environmental factors over the long term. I analyzed 27 years of banding data, 37 years of nest monitoring data, and 20 years of winter reports to estimate age-specific mortality and fecundity rates. The resulting life table yielded an intrinsic rate of increase (r) of 0.14/y, a net reproductive rate (Ro) of 6.4/y, and a mean length of a generation (G) of 13y. Path analysis of environmental factors, demographic variables (natality and mortality), and the finite rate of population increase (lambda) showed that annual mortality, temperatures from the ANWR, WBNP and at a migration stop-over in Nebraska, and pond water depth were good predictors of lambda variability. However, other environmental factors were significantly correlated: at ANWR, October- March temperature (extreme minimum and maximum), December temperature (mean and extreme minimum), November-January precipitation, and September-March freshwater inflow; at WBNP, March-September precipitation, March-May temperature, and temperatures during the September - October fall migration. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) affected lambda indirectly through environmental factors in Nebraska and ANWR. I graphically analyzed relevant data trends from 1967 to 2004 to identify the relation between phases of PDO and environmental and demographic variables. During PDO cold phases, a synchronization of “extreme” environmental values was observed from the different regions; during warm phases extreme environmental values were scattered. Most periods of Whooping Crane population decline happened during cold phases. I developed a compartment model to represent Whooping Crane population dynamics utilizing the new data on survivorship and fecundity from banded birds. The model was capable of simulating historical population trends with adjustments in brood success and egg mortality. The model will allow future studies to test population responses to various environmental scenarios at the WBNP, during fall and spring migrations, and at the ANWR.

Thesis (M.E. Des.)--University of Calgary, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: The Committee on Rare and Endangered Wildlife Species (CREWS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) made important and lasting contributions to one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation in U.S. history: the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). CREWS was a prominent science-advisory body within the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) in the 1960s and 1970s, responsible for advising on the development of federal endangered-wildlife policy. The Committee took full advantage of its scientific and political authority by identifying a particular object of conservation--used in the development of the first U.S. list of endangered species--and establishing captive breeding as a primary conservation practice, both of which were written into the ESA and are employed in endangered-species listing and recovery to this day. Despite these important contributions to federal endangered-species practice and policy, CREWS has received little attention from historians of science or policy scholars. This dissertation is an empirical history of CREWS that draws on primary sources from the Smithsonian Institution (SI) Archives and a detailed analysis of the U.S. congressional record. The SI sources (including the records of the Bird and Mammal Laboratory, an FWS staffed research group stationed at the Smithsonian Institution) reveal the technical and political details of CREWS's advisory work. The congressional record provides evidence showing significant contributions of CREWS and its advisors and supervisors to the legislative process that resulted in the inclusion of key CREWS-inspired concepts and practices in the ESA. The foundational concepts and practices of the CREWS's research program drew from a number of areas currently of interest to several sub-disciplines that investigate the complex relationship between science and society. Among them are migratory bird conservation, systematics inspired by the Evolutionary Synthesis, species-focused ecology, captive breeding, reintroduction, and species transplantation. The following pages describe the role played by CREWS in drawing these various threads together and codifying them as endangered-species policy in the ESA. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Biology 2011