Exploring Nature: Whoopers

There are 15 species of cranes throughout the world, inhabiting every continent except South America and Antarctica. Among the rarest of these is the majestic whooping crane, Grus americana.

Standing about five feet, this is the tallest of all North American birds. And it came very close to going extinct.

Back in the 1930s, whoopers were gong downhill in a hurry. They were shot by hunters and the marshes they thrived on were being drained for crops. Then, in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order creating the new federal Aransas Migratory Waterfowl Refuge in deep south Texas.