NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic is drastically reducing the number of young whooping cranes to be released this fall to help bring back the world’s rarest cranes. Zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred have had to cut not only staff size but use of two techniques to boost the birds’ numbers: artificial insemination and hand-rearing -- or, rather, costume-rearing -- chicks.

 Whooping cranes are North America’s tallest birds, 5 feet (1.5 meters) high from their black feet to the little red caps on their heads. They’re white with black tips on wings spanning 7 feet (2.1 meters). They mate for life.


Only about 825 exist. All are descended from 15 that had survived habitat loss and hunters in 1941, breeding in Canada’s largest national park and wintering in Aransas, Texas.

 Biologists are trying to establish two more flocks to mitigate disaster should anything happen to the original flock, now 500 strong. There are 75 birds based in Louisiana and 85 in a flock taught to migrate from Wisconsin to Florida by following ultralight aircraft.

 In a normal year, breeders in various areas and wildlife agents in Louisiana and Wisconsin would collect some eggs for incubation, knowing the parents will lay a second and even a third clutch. That both increases the number of chicks per year and, in Wisconsin, helps keep wild chicks from hatching during the worst of the bloodsucking black fly season, which has proven dangerous to them.


Some incubated chicks get captive whoopers as surrogate parents, but there aren’t enough for all. To keep the rest from viewing people as their flock, keepers don baggy white “crane costumes” that cover them from head to ankles, and manipulate crane-head hand puppets to teach chicks to forage for insects.

 Audubon Nature Institute’s Species Survival Center in New Orleans usually costume-raises a number of chicks. But COVID-19 is expected to cut revenues $21 million — nearly 37% of the year’s planned budget — at the institute, which also includes a zoo, aquarium, insectarium and nature center. That has meant staff cuts -- mostly in maintenance — which means keepers are doing some of that work and have less time overall, curator Michelle Hatwood said.