Post-release survival of hand-reared and parent-reared Mississippi sandhill cranes

The Condor
By: , and 

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Abstract

The Mississippi Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis pulla) reintroduction program is the largest crane reintroduction effort in the world. Here we report on a 4-year experiment in which we compared post-release survival rates of 56 hand-reared and 76 parent-reared Mississippi Sandhill Cranes. First-year survival was 80%. Surprisingly, hand-reared cranes survived better than parent-reared birds, and the highest survival rates were for hand-reared juveniles released in mixed cohorts with parent-reared birds. Mixing improved survival most for parent-reared birds released with hand-reared birds. These results demonstrate that hand-rearing can produce birds which survive at least as well as parent-reared birds and that improved survival results from mixing hand-reared and parent-reared birds.

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Post-release survival of hand-reared and parent-reared Mississippi sandhill cranes
Series title The Condor
DOI 10.1650/0010-5422(2000)102[0104:PRSOHR]2.0.CO;2
Volume 102
Issue 1
Year Published 2000
Language English
Publisher Cooper Ornithological Society
Contributing office(s) National Wildlife Health Center, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
Description 9 p.
First page 104
Last page 112
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