Summary

Description

This protocol is primarily designed to provide a mechanism for monitoring trends in whooping crane abundance on their wintering grounds along the Texas gulf coast. Secondarily, the protocol provides mechanisms for monitoring recruitment rates, the number of whooping crane pairs that recruited young into the winter flock, and whooping crane winter range expansion. Finally, this protocol is designed to augment planning and conservation efforts with information about the relationships among local whooping crane abundance and habitat or environmental characteristics.The survey methods provided in this protocol are a defensible, statistically rigorous means to estimate the annual abundance, and associated degree of confidence, of whooping cranes wintering within the sampling frame. Furthermore, the survey methods provide for defensible estimates of the number of whooping crane pairs and the number of pairs that recruited young into the winter flock, which are downlisting criteria identified by the International Recovery Plan for whooping cranes. Finally, the use of hierarchical distance sampling provides spatiallyexplicit maps of whooping crane abundance. The predictive models used to create these maps provide a better understanding of whooping crane resource use, which will guide whooping crane conservation efforts. They also inform management, identify potentially important future whooping crane habitat, and direct land conservation and development initiatives. This protocol has a digital object identifier. doi:10.7944W3159J