Sara Zimorski
Sara grew up and went to school in Charlottesville, Virginia, studying biology at the University of Virginia. She never laid eyes on a crane, or at least doesn’t remember seeing or hearing anything about them until she moved to Wisconsin to work at the International Crane Foundation. From there she was hooked and has worked with cranes, specifically whooping cranes ever since! Throughout her time at ICF she worked with both the captive flock as well as the reintroduced eastern migratory flock of whooping cranes, migrating south with them for many years. In late 2010, she migrated south again, this time to southwest Louisiana to head up the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ effort to reintroduce and establish a population of whooping cranes in the state after an absence of over 60 years.
Talk: A Tale of Two Cranes
Cranes don’t recognize borders and it’s natural for young birds to move around and explore new areas. Additionally, the habitat in southeast Texas is very similar to the habitat in southwest Louisiana. So, we probably shouldn’t have been surprised when some of the first non-migratory whooping cranes reintroduced to Louisiana made exploratory flights and short trips into Texas, a pattern that continued with each new group of birds that was released. What was surprising, years later, was having two pairs establish breeding territories and nest in Texas for several years. Unfortunately, both male members of these pairs died leaving their mates alone in Texas without much likelihood of finding a new mate. After these lone females failed to return to Louisiana we made the decision to give them a helping hand by capturing and transporting them back to Louisiana where they were released in familiar locations in the vicinity of other whooping cranes. While both still survive in Louisiana their paths have been fairly different and not exactly what we expected.