POST-RELEASE SURVIVAL OF HAND-REARED AND PARENT-REARED MISSISSIPPI SANDHILL CRANES

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, handreared 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 parentreared birds and that improved survival results from mixing hand-reared and parent-reared birds.