George F. Gee Scott G. Hereford Glenn H. Olsen T. David Chisolm Jane M. Nicolich Kathleen A. Sullivan Nancy J. Thomas Meenakshi Nagendran Jeff S. Hatfield David H. Ellis 2000 <p><span>The Mississippi Sandhill Crane (</span><i>Grus canadensis pulla</i><span>) 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.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1650/0010-5422(2000)102[0104:PRSOHR]2.0.CO;2 en Cooper Ornithological Society Post-release survival of hand-reared and parent-reared Mississippi sandhill cranes article