What should I expect on the CREW Trails this summer?
Water! You may have heard us say this before, but I’ll say it again here, CREW is ALL about water!
As rainwater accumulates on the ground, absorbing and leaching through the ground surface down through the porous limestone rock and into the aquifer, it replenishes the groundwater and restores the aquifer.
Lakes around CREW Flint Pen Strand trails
We won’t see that water again until we either turn on the faucet, or visit the trails after the water table rises above the surface. That’s also the point when we describe the trails as, “inundated with water” and you should prepare for a wet walk.
“It’s always amazing how that point of saturation seems to break the ground surface overnight in CREW, as the aquifer literally fills up and overflows on the trails.”
CREW Trust executive director Brenda Brooks
Saturation happens at different times throughout CREW because it is such a large watershed with 60,000 acres of land. After that stage, we start to see the next step in the cycle of water through the CREW lands, called sheetflow.
Sandhill Cranes grazing around CREW Flint Pen Strand marshes
You may want to take a moment this summer when you’re out on the CREW trails to celebrate the rainy season because wet trails mean fresh drinking water, flood protection and numerous other benefits for humans and wildlife that frequent this corridor of Florida.
Reclaimed water is the second phase of our drinking water extracted from underground aquifers (Bonita Springs Utilities)
CREW Trails
CREW Marsh trails:
American Bluehearts at the CREW Marsh trails
On the northern side of the CREW Marsh watershed, you’ll find the CREW Marsh trails. These trails will remain dry, for the most part, the longest of any trail system, as most of the sheetflow from the CREW Marsh will slowly trickle southwest. However, smaller seasonal marshes along the ecotones of the trail will fill up around the same time as the CREW Marsh and flow over the trails. Once the water level is above the ground surface, expect to consistently get your feet to ankles wet on these trails. The Red trail that hugs the CREW Marsh will fill up first, along with the Green trail as they both border the largest accumulation of water, our 5,000-acre sawgrass marsh.
CREW Cypress Dome trails:
Nesting Swallow-tailed Kite at CREW Cypress Dome trails
Areas of the Green trail near the cypress dome and almost all of the Wild Coffee trail will become increasingly inundated with water as the water table rises. If you hike the Wild Coffee trail and portions of the White trail, expect to get wet up to your waist at its highest and wettest point. Other sections of the White trail will pool water and increase the likelihood of getting your feet wet. The crossover from CREW Cypress Dome trail to Caracara Prairie Preserve trails will require you to ford across a small canal. This area can fill to waist height, so be prepared to get very wet. Caracara Prairie Preserve includes one elongated marsh crossing and several areas of the trails become inundated with water.
CREW Flint Pen Strand trails:
Barred Owl at CREW Flint Pen Strand trails
Take a walk along the bumpy berm of the Red trail, left behind by the canal excavation constructed to direct water through the early farmlands once present in CREW Flint Pen Strand. Trails bordering the Kehl Canal, headwaters for the Imperial River which runs to the Gulf of Mexico, are a great place to watch water levels rise as we get more into our rainy season. Check out the Yellow trails north and south along with the Red trail to get a view of the Kehl Canal. Or hike east on the Orange and Purple trails, where you can see some of the impact of the hydrologic restoration (link to previous article) designed to restore and slow the sheet flow over the surface of the land, giving it more time to soak in and replenish the aquifer. All of these trails will eventually be underwater, especially in the marshes surrounding the lakes.
CREW Bird Rookery Swamp trail:
CREW Trust volunteers walking around a gator tail at CREW Bird Rookery Swamp trail
The trails here were constructed on a historic railroad tram, which continues to provide a raised trail above the surrounding swamp. The low dips will fill with water and require crossing.
Join the CREW Trust and take the #NationalTrailsDay Pledge. Millions of people have found physical, mental, and emotional restoration on trails during the pandemic.
Let’s return the favor.
Together we can care for our hometown trails and advocate for equitable access to quality green space.
Taking place on the first Saturday in June, National Trails Day® is a day of public events aimed at advocacy and trail service.
Thousands of hikers, bikers, rowers, horseback riders, trail clubs, federal and local agencies, land trusts (including the CREW Trust), and businesses come together in partnership to advocate for, maintain, and clean up public lands and trails.
So no matter where you are, celebrate National Trails Day and join trail lovers everywhere on June 5th! Here’s how you can get involved:
While the CREW Trust doesn’t have a group event scheduled this year, you can get together with friends and family and make a difference on any trail. The CREW trail system with the most need is at CREW Flint Pen Strand. Bring some trash bags and a few extra hands to help pack out some of that unnatural garbage! Remember, trash collects trash, so the more we can pack out together, the longer lasting impact your work will have.
Pine trees and understory growth after a prescribed burn at CREW Flint Pen Strand
Some recent guests on the CREW trails have inquired why they’re torn up? The long-range plans and efforts of the South Florida Water Management District (the District hereafter) can be a challenge on initial view, as “discing” and “shredding” projects can resemble hog damage or really knobby ATV tires wrecking havoc, both of which land managers set out to prevent. So why are they seemingly adding to the destruction?
These tracks of discing and shredding are in fact intentional and well-planned measures designed to prepare for upcoming prescribed burns or chemical treatment, ultimately preventing vegetation from getting out of control. Vegetation can include non-native plants, shrubby understory, or native plants and trees that have grown out of balance with historical norms. Forestry science is behind the land management plans in place and its driving force is the long-range preservation goals of the CREW project.
Even though the trails look less than ideal when torn up and the rough patches can make hiking and biking more difficult, just remember why CREW is here in the first place. It’s all about the water. These efforts benefit the watershed where we get our drinking water. Also, it’s good to think of the hierarchy of needs throughout the CREW lands like this: it begins with water and land management, then comes preserving habitat and then recreational opportunities for everyone.
Let’s discuss the management process we’re looking at on the trails. In order to perform a prescribed burn the District team must get approval from the state of Florida. Often this overlaps with an annual shredding plan, replete with maps and intensity, to clear the ground of any obtrusive vegetation before burns are scheduled. The burn prescription is based on several environmental factors, such as wind speed and direction, humidity and the burn history in the area.
Assuming the burn prescription was approved the team, formed from several agencies including the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC hereafter), must then coordinate their efforts and communicate their plans with the surrounding community. Working from a burn map (or planning map), the lead manager will direct the team to burn the fire line. In constant communication, the team stays on the fire from start to finish, following up the next several days for safety and reporting.
Ultimately, the goal is to decrease the amount of understory vegetation in the CREW project, to prevent wildfires from getting out of hand, and encourage healthy native species growth. Many native fire-dependent species exist in the CREW lands, including the Slash Pine trees and Saw Palmetto which have evolved to withstand heat and benefit from fire. Prescribed burns also benefit the wildlife native to CREW, including the gopher tortoise, which prefers some open scrub to the encroachment of the long-living Saw Palmetto.
Hopefully, the next time you see the process or after-effects of the land management efforts to preserve these lands you will have a better understanding of their long range intentions. If you would like to learn more about this process, there are a few great resources found here. Always feel free to reach out to our office or that of the District with your questions.
by Allison Vincent, CREW Trust Communications Director
Eagle scout team assisting with the install of 10 benches in 2 days at CREW Flint Pen Strand!
What does it take to complete an Eagle Scout project with the CREW Trust? That was the first question posed by 17-year-old Eagle Scout candidate, Jake, when he reached out to the CREW Trust back in July of 2020.
Over the years, the CREW Trust has partnered with quite a few successful Eagle Scout projects, which aim to benefit the community enjoying the CREW trails.
Important to the planning phase and really the first hurdle to a partnership project involves the scout’s willingness to remain open to the needs of the organization. Initial proposals aren’t always a good fit and a good scout’s job, like any good partner, is to listen to the needs of an organization which they aim to help. Luckily, Jake was flexible and ready for the challenge and something the CREW trails needed desperately were benches at the newest trail system, CREW Flint Pen Strand.
For this to be an appropriate Eagle Scout challenge, “the project needed to be attainable, but not easy” reflected Brenda Brooks, CREW Trust Executive Director, and ten benches covering five-miles of trails is no walk in the park. Brooks and CREW Trust volunteers personally worked with Jake and his Eagle coach to scout the trails for the best bench locations. Parameters were set based on distance, view and the undefinable need for a bench.
Next came the design. Many zoom calls, phone conversations and emails led to the development of a great team-oriented action plan, with Jake at the helm. A major component of all Eagle Scout projects is the opportunity for the applicant to organize, lead and manage a project from start to completion. Imagine fundraising during this difficult time, we know how hard it is as a non-profit, yet Jake was able to creatively think outside the box to raise the funds needed. Jake demonstrated great leadership through a challenging pandemic pulling his team of fellow scouts and leaders together to see the project through.
Jake’s team created the ten sturdy benches you can now enjoy on the Red, Yellow, and Orange trails at CREW Flint Pen Strand in Bonita Springs. “I hope the benches serve CREW well and help people enjoy the beauty of Flint Pen Strand” -Jake, Boy Scouts of America. Thank you Jake, from the CREW Trust, for your legacy project!
by Allison Vincent, CREW Trust Communications Director
Geocache Day April 24, 2021 at CREW Marsh Trails, 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. Register here for this event as space is limited.
Geocaching is an any day, anytime adventure that can take you to amazing and beautiful places or even just to a place in your town that you’ve never been before! That’s the introductory hook of the “What is Geocaching?” video on the Geocaching website, Geocaching.com, that captures the excitement and universal enjoyment of Geocaching adventures. The caches at CREW fit neatly into the “amazing and beautiful places” category with 122 active caches!
What is Geocaching you might ask! Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunt using GPS-enabled devices to locate your geocache. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. These containers vary greatly in size and appearance. In the field you will see everything from large, metal cases, a fake stump with a hidden compartment, to a coconut with a film canister sized hole drilled out. First thing you need to do is get a general idea of the cache’s size from the cache page then narrow down your search with the location point. When you arrive at your coordinates, put down your GPS device and look around for the cache. Think to yourself, if I were to hide a cache, where would I put it?
Many individuals, families and friends start Geocaching because they like to get out in nature and experience places they would never have seen before with a purpose in mind. Geocaching brings that extra layer of motivation that gets all ages out the door exploring. Often Geocaching includes solving puzzles, searching for clues and answering riddles that challenge you to see your environment in a new way. When you go Geocaching get ready to challenge yourself in a mental exercise, in addition to a physical one! It’s literally active problem solving! Geocaching also lends itself to seeing a place like a local, often embracing insider knowledge of an unknown area. So, get out there, visit new spots like a local and discover incredible places like the CREW trails through fresh eyes!
Q & A with Pete Corradino AKA JunglePete of Everglades Day Safari
What originally got you into Geocaching?
In 2004, I was working as an environmental educator for the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. I had befriended a man on one of my programs who was an avid hiker and was looking to go on a 4-mile excursion to a half-frozen waterfall. He needed someone to accompany him for safety reasons and so I volunteered. During the 2-mile trek up to the falls he revealed his primary purpose for the hike, but I was sworn to secrecy. I was a bit concerned he was going to push me over the falls, but he turned out to be an active geocacher in the early years of the sport. Here we were, only four years after Geocaching was invented, creating one of only a few thousand geocaches hidden around the world! It’s named “between a rock and a hard place” and was placed in 2001 – just a year after geocaching started and it’s still active! While the idea of finding a hidden container in the woods and logbook to write of your adventure was intriguing, the most important thing to me was that it brought me to this place – Lye Brook Falls and I have this story to retell. It set me off on thousands of adventures in the US, Canada and Ecuador, everyone with their own story!
Do you have any advice for new Geocachers?
Go to events! You’ll meet interesting, weird, goofy, fun, adventurous people and that leads to crazy new adventures too. I’ve met some of my best friends through geocaching including Milla and Dick (Nolehawks) who are like surrogate grandparents to my kids. I would also say enjoy “the numbers”, the statistics that you accumulate over time, but appreciate the experience (good and bad) that comes from finding these hidden treasures.
Tell us your best geocaching story.
During Hurricane Irma we evacuated to Pikeville, Tennessee where my family lives. They brought us out to Fall Creek Falls State Park which has spectacular waterfalls and scenic views along a mountain ridge. There are a few caches in the park, but Piney Creek Falls was my favorite and probably the most dangerous one I have found. I had to cross a swinging bridge that traversed a small chasm. From there my 7-year-old son and I descended to the river, made our way across cold, wet rocks and then removed our socks and shoes so we could make it the rest of the way across the river. Once we had our socks and shoes back on, we climbed 20 feet up a cliff landing where my son sat with my camera taking pictures of me as I climbed another 20 feet straight up above the river to find a cache that was tucked into a rock ledge. It was quite the adrenaline rush and fortunately my son didn’t have to record me plummeting to my death on my birthday while retrieving a cache.
What type of gear works best?
I use my iPad and iPhone which is limited by cell service and battery life. I bring backup charging bricks to keep them charged for long excursions. Tweezers are good to retrieve paper logs that get stuck in the container and replacement paper and plastic baggies are helpful to maintain caches that need some love.
What makes the CREW trails a great place for geocaches?
The poison ivy! The green briars! The rattlesnakes! I absolutely love the CREW Marsh trails, the CREW Cypress Dome trails and the CREW Bird Rookery Swamp trails. We have had so much fun placing over 400 caches over the last 13 years. We can’t wait to put caches out on the CREW Flint Pen Trails! The thing that I love about these trails is I can hike for miles in solitude and each location has its own unique beauty. I love the dew-covered spider webs in the morning, the Zebra Longwings roosting before sunrise, the cypress dome at sunset. I could go on and on but the great thing about the caches of CREW is that it’s an introduction for many people to one of the least known and most beautiful places in Southwest Florida. Once people have visited and found a few caches they want to keep going and explore every nook and cranny including the Wild Coffee Trail, the Pop Ash Trail and even the service roads! I’ve seen bears, painted buntings, armadillos and so much more on those service roads and yes rattlesnakes and poison ivy.
Why should I come to Geocache Day at CREW?
Attending events is a great way to meet new people who share the same interest in geocaching. It brings together people that might not ordinarily meet and most importantly it brings everyone together to explore! This might be the first time that someone visits the CREW trails, or they may have been out to every event we’ve done since 2009. Either way we are all in good company!
As of Saturday 4/24/21 there will have been 290 Traditional Caches 59 Mystery Caches 21 Letterbox Caches 12 Event Caches 10 Multi Caches 7 Wherigo Caches 1 Earthcache
As of Saturday 4/24/21 there will be 122 active geocache CREW Cypress Dome Trails – 36 CREW Marsh Trails – 41 CREW Bird Rookery Swamp Trails – 45
The Event on Saturday will be the 400th cache!
Thanks to the following geocachers who have placed caches over the years at CREW:
Blue Diamonds – Roger Terrel FLPirate – Roger Primus JunglePete – Pete Corradino Junglito – Theo Corradino Ecuadorable – MaLe Corradino Lehigh Mafia – Rob & Staci Johnson Matkat* – Gary Mangan Nolehawks – Milla and Dick Voellinger Pilot searcher – Brian Wylie rbmotmot – Tim Hall sandbetweenmytoes – Kris Slagle Team Crime Scene – Kenny Jenkins The Wench – Jean Primus
Your impact on the ecosystems in and surrounding the CREW trails has gone beyond our wildest expectations this year. We braced for a year without our largest fundraiser, the CREW Concert & Silent Eco-Auction, predicting a deficit, but wow, were we surprised! Because of your continued generosity and many new members, we’re standing on much steadier ground than expected.
We’ve all experienced many changes in the way we live this past year, and everyone has learned to pivot from our personal and shared normal. Fortunately, many of the “outside of the box” ideas we’ve applied to stay connected to you have worked very well, so well, that we might keep them up. Instead of larger groups for our programs, we limited enrollment in each one and increased the number of events or programs. This made it possible to bring more visitors to the trails, often for the first time, on more intimate tours, which allowed visitors to get a more individualized experience of CREW.
Our CREW Trust volunteers collaborated constantly on trail maintenance and improvements throughout all four CREW trail systems. We’re nearly ready to launch our newest trail connecting CREW Flint Pen Strand and CREW Bird Rookery Swamp trails, a remarkable accomplishment years in the making! This new trail is marked with purple post signs.
Last but certainly not least, membership numbers increased by marked numbers, with many of you stepping up as ‘neighbors’ (both literal and implied) to the CREW lands. Thank you all! Your support is the embodiment of true trail stewardship in action. You clearly care about the CREW Trust’s mission and the 60,000 acres of lands that surround these publicly accessible CREW trails.
Come Easter, we see a more predictable while ever difficult change when we say goodbye to many of our seasonal friends as they return to their summer homes. CREW is approaching its slower summer season as the summer heat and rainy season gives us opportunity to plan our 2021-2022 season of events for you.
Every individual makes an impact with their donation, as we have a wide variety of uses for every penny. From general trail maintenance, which requires tools and gear upkeep, to large purchases like kiosk signs to off-road vehicles and their maintenance. When you donate or become a member, every penny is multiplied by our expertly guided volunteer projects. Everything in these gritty Florida environs require continuous upkeep and periodic replacement. So, when you’re out on the trail and notice a new sign post, or observe a clear view of the wildlife ahead because the weed whacking crew was recently clearing the trail, just know that those things only happen because of your donations and the collective contributions of many friends of CREW.
Thank you for continuing to support the CREW Trust during this difficult and unprecedented time. Your commitment to environmental preservation has never been more strongly tested and proven than this season. You’ve stuck by what really matters and our South Florida environment will be stronger in the future because of your commitment.
We hope that, you and your friends and family make it out to the CREW trails a few more times before returning to your summer destinations. The CREW lands are thriving and continue to be a unique outlet for environmental preservation work, one that should give you some peace of mind in these trying times. Every time you take a drink of water, remember that it started in the CREW watershed and know you’re making an impact, and you’re making it for everyone.
For those who stay here throughout the summer, remember the CREW trails are open 365 days a year, 7 days a week, from sunrise to sunset. With four different trail systems, there’s always something new to explore, wildlife bucket lists to check off, and a seasonal change to observe.
Rare sights and sounds abound throughout the CREW trails, especially when compared to the urbanized communities most of us call home. Nevertheless, some species are considerably more rare to see or hear even within the preserved lands of CREW. One such species is the gopher frog, Lithobates capito, a stout-bodied, boldly spotted frog with a chunky appearance that reaches a length of two to four inches. Within the CREW lands, they have their own specialized communities and you can find them in xeric hammock, scrubby and mesic flatwoods, mixed hardwood-pine communities and a variety of disturbed habitats.
Xeric hammock
Scrubby flatwoods
Mesic flatwoods
Hardwood-pine community
This species gets its name from it’s homely use of gopher tortoise burrows. Gopher frogs are nocturnal, normally spending their day in tunnels, stump holes, and gopher tortoise burrows. However, because of habitat destruction, the gopher frog is very rare in its southern range of south Florida, and is listed as a FWC species of special concern in Florida.
Pivotal to the success of future generations of gopher frogs is land management and preservation, like the work you support at CREW. Prescribed fire and shredding of vegetation in the understory of their ecosystems helps to eliminate small shrubby tree encroachment, dense debris, peat buildup, and increased evapotranspiration (evaporation of surface water and release of water vapor).
Partnership between the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) wildlife biologists and the South Florida Water Management District land managers ensures that habitat restoration takes place within the CREW project which in turn greatly benefits environmental sensitive species like the gopher frog.
FWC biologists at CREW have recently reignited research on game and predaceous fish, another threat to gopher frog populations.
FWC photo by Kevin Enge
In Search of a Mate
Gopher frogs will travel long distances (up to a mile or more) to breed mainly in seasonally flooded, temporary breeding ponds, but also in permanent waters. The gopher frogs occurring in southern Florida will breed a second time in the summer. Females lay eggs in shallow water in a single mass that can contain 3,000 to 7,000 eggs. Once hatched, the tadpoles metamorphose in three to seven months. Gopher frogs usually reach sexual maturity at two years of age.
Listen for the Chorus
The call of a gopher frog is developed in the back of the mouth and sounds like a deep guttural snore. Heavy rains at any season may stimulate choruses, resulting with many of them calling at once. Sometimes they call from underwater, so as not to attract predators, creating a noise that is detected only by a hydrophone, which is defined exactly as the name implies, a microphone which detects sound waves underwater.
The Big Cypress fox squirrel (Sciurus niger avicennia) at CREW Flint Pen Strand
Most of us are familiar with the gregarious tree climber, the grey squirrel, but what do you know about its relative from southwest Florida, the big cypress fox squirrel (BCFS)?
Theirs is the classic story of the city mouse and country mouse, except of course, they’re squirrels. Grey’s a typical synanthrope, or a wild animal that lives near and benefits from human beings, whereas the BCFS is well, more of a hermit, except perhaps when you get them on the golf course.
One can easily tell a BCFS from a grey squirrel by color and size. BCFSs sport an array of colorful coats, commonly with a black jacket running from their head to back and tan sides extending over the belly. However, they can also show a rusty orange or more fully tan. Their most universal color feature tends to be their white ears and white around their nose. BCFSs also have a larger body size when compared to the grey squirrel, reaching up to 26 inches compared to the grey squirrel’s average of 19 inches and under.
CREW visitors are often lucky enough to see BCFSs throughout the CREW trails because these squirrels prefer a habitat mosaic, like the one preserved within the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed, including pine flatwoods, cypress swamps, and hardwood hammocks. Prescribed burns greatly benefit the BCFS as they have greater foraging success with broad transitions between ecotones, or the area of transition between two plant communities. Their limited range extends from southwest of Lake Okeechobee and south of the Caloosahatchee River to south Big Cypress Basin.
Mating is thought to occur year-round but mostly around November – February and April – July. The best way to determine if a nest is active is to look for freshly stripped cypress bark on the trunk. BCFSs often build nests starting with a stand of Tillandsia air-plant gathering nesting material near the trunk. Another way to locate BCFSs is to keep an eye out for the remains of the following food items near cypress trees: fruit from pond apple, cabbage palm, cocoplum, wax myrtle, saw palmetto, hog plum and fungi; seed cones from south Florida slash pine and pond cypress.
The future of BCFSs is uncertain, as they face considerable threats to their population as development continues to increase in Southwest Florida. The suppression of fire due to land use changes, such as agriculture and development, causes the understory to grow and make habitat unsuitable. Additionally, changes in hydrological conditions, hunting, poaching, wildlife diseases (like the deadly squirrel poxvirus), predation, road mortality, and hurricanes also affect the species survival. However, projected human population growth in Southwest Florida ensures that habitat degradation, fragmentation, and loss will remain the biggest threat to the BCFS.
The long-term survival of the BCFS is dependent upon the public awareness and support of habitat management projects on private and public lands (like the CREW lands), where the use of prescribed fire, the control of invasive non-native plants/animals, and the maintenance of natural hydrologic conditions are necessary to retain habitat characteristics that benefit the BCFS.
Where Can I See a Big Cypress Fox Squirrel? Although BCFS are rare in natural habitats, you may catch a glimpse of one at any of the four CREW trail systems, although they are most often photographed at CREW Flint Pen Strand. Big Cypress fox squirrels are typically found in their nests within approximately 1 hour of sunset and begin their daily activity approximately 1–2 hours after sunrise. Therefore, the best time to see one is typically between 9:00 am–4:00 pm.
A perfect BCFS nesting perch, however no nest is present in this photo
Hiking around the CREW Cypress Dome trails and into Caracara Prairie Preserve you’re likely to find at least one pair of sandhill cranes foraging together. These are often residents, as opposed to migratory, as our region of Florida is one of the few places to find year-round residents (ironic, we know).
These impressively long-legged, long-necked, heron-like birds fly with necks outstretched like geese and trumpet their calls with a distinct flair, like loud rattling bugle calls that can be heard up to 2.5 miles away. Calls are made in flight as well as on the ground for many reasons, including courtship. Their unique trumpeting is a product of anatomy: long tracheas (windpipes) curl into the sternum and help the sound develop a lower pitch.
Sandhill cranes find a mate around two years of age and stay with that one mate for the duration of their lives. Courtship rituals may be observed with patience and good timing, for which you may be rewarded with shows of dancing that includes jumping, running, and wing flapping. Males are larger than females, but external markings are identical. Sandhill cranes live to be older than most birds, some reaching 20 years old which makes their monogamous pairing even more significant.
Nests are built by both mates with grass, moss, and sticks from vegetation, starting with dried pieces and adding green material later in the nesting cycle. Both mates may gather material, tossing it over their shoulders to form a mound. Sandhill cranes breed in open wetland areas surrounded by shrubs and trees. Two eggs are normally laid incubating for 32 days and both males and females participate in incubating the eggs. When you see a solitary sandhill crane, that usually indicates that they are one half of a breeding pair, and their other half is with the nest.
The future of the sandhill crane population is mainly tied to the fate of their habitat which is another reason we should preserve wetland habitats. The sandhill crane populations are generally strong, however isolated populations in Cuba and Mississippi are endangered.
photo by CREW Trust volunteer, Michael Lund
View the Sandhill Crane Finder to explore Sandhill Crane distribution and locate cranes near you!
Meine, C.D. and G.W. Archibald (Eds.). 1996. Sandhill Crane (Grus canadensis) in The cranes: status survey and conservation action plan. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, U.K. 294 Pp. http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/cranes/gruscana.htm . Accessed 10/25/2010).
Nesbitt S.A., 1996. Florida Sandhill Crane. Pages 219 – 229 in J.A. Rodgers, Jr., H.W. Kale II, and H.T. Smith (Eds.). Rare and endangered biota of Florida, Vol. V: Birds. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
