Species profile
Grus americana
Whooping crane
This is a curated published estimate, not a live census. Estimates may refer to mature individuals, wild individuals or a documented range and are not directly comparable between species.
EN · Endangered — Endangered — very high risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Whooping crane (Grus americana) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Endangered. Whooping cranes stood at just 21 birds in 1941; today's flock of over 800 descends from that tiny remnant after eight decades of protection. Its recorded population direction is increasing. That is encouraging, but it does not remove continuing pressures or make every population secure.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with wetland. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Some young cranes learned their migration route by following human-piloted ultralight aircraft dressed up as cranes — the Operation Migration project. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
At 1.5 m tall, it is North America's tallest bird, and its trumpeting call — amplified by a 1.5-metre windpipe coiled inside its chest — carries for kilometres. The catalogue records 3 principal pressures for this profile: Wetland loss, Powerline collisions, Hurricanes. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Protecting and reconnecting habitat is a priority, together with infrastructure planning that keeps feeding, breeding or migration routes functional. Climate monitoring and protection of ecological refuges are needed because reducing other pressures improves the capacity to adapt. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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Listen to this species
Backbone Rd, Polk Cty, Florida · 0:39 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/