{"id":648282,"date":"2010-01-29T15:49:14","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T20:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef0128772f273e970c"},"modified":"2010-01-29T15:49:14","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T20:49:14","slug":"officials-fear-drought-food-scarcity-could-lead-to-mass-die-off-for-texas-whooping-crane-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/648282","title":{"rendered":"Officials fear drought, food scarcity could lead to mass die-off for Texas whooping crane population"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"whooping crane searches for food at the   Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Rockport, Texas.\" class=\"asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a82b9d56970b \" src=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/.a\/6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a82b9d56970b-600wi\" style=\"WIDTH: 600px\"><\/img><\/p>\n<p>DALLAS \u2014 Wildlife officials fear the world&#8217;s only remaining natural flock of endangered <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Whooping_Crane\">whooping cranes<\/a> could be at risk of another winter die-off.<\/p>\n<p>The flock suffered a record 23 deaths last year at its drought-stricken winter nesting grounds in southern Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Wildlife managers say a scarcity of food in the area could spell disaster for North America&#8217;s tallest birds this winter too. The rains came too late last winter to produce a healthy population of blue crabs upon which the cranes thrive, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fears a resulting significant die-off among the flock this year.<\/p>\n<p>Officials say only 263 birds remain in the flock, which migrates without human help from Canada every year. One chick has died this season and another has disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Associated Press<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: A whooping crane searches for food at the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aransas_National_Wildlife_Refuge\">Aransas National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> near Rockport, Texas, in 2006. Credit: Ron Heflin \/ Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DALLAS \u2014 Wildlife officials fear the world&#8217;s only remaining natural flock of endangered whooping cranes could be at risk of another winter die-off. The flock suffered a record 23 deaths last year at its drought-stricken winter nesting grounds in southern Texas. Wildlife managers say a scarcity of food in the area could spell disaster for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2648,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2IEa","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}