DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5433qj7
title: Data from: Whooping crane use of riverine stopover sites

description: Migratory birds like endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana) require
 suitable nocturnal roost sites during twice annual migrations. Whooping
 cranes primarily roost in shallow surface water wetlands, ponds, and
 rivers. All these features have been greatly impacted by human activities,
 which present threats to the continued recovery of the species. A portion
 of one such river, the central Platte River, has been identified as
 critical habitat for the survival of the endangered whooping crane.
 Management intervention is now underway to rehabilitate habitat form and
 function on the central Platte River to increase use and thereby
 contribute to the survival of whooping cranes. The goal of our analyses
 was to develop habitat selection models that could be used to direct
 riverine habitat management activities (i.e., channel widening, tree
 removal, flow augmentation, etc.) along the central Platte River and
 throughout the species’ range. As such, we focused our analyses on two
 robust sets of whooping crane observations and habitat metrics the Platte
 River Recovery Implementation Program (Program or PRRIP) and other such
 organizations could influence. This included channel characteristics such
 as total channel width, the width of channel unobstructed by dense
 vegetation, and distance of forest from the edge of the channel and
 flow-related metrics like wetted width and unit discharge (flow volume per
 linear meter of wetted channel width) that could be influenced by flow
 augmentation or reductions during migration. We used 17 years of
 systematic monitoring data in a discrete-choice framework to evaluate the
 influence these various metrics have on the relative probability of
 whooping crane use and found the width of channel unobstructed by dense
 vegetation and distance to the nearest forest were the best predictors of
 whooping crane use. Secondly, we used telemetry data obtained from a
 sample of 38 birds of all ages over the course of seven years, 2010–2016,
 to evaluate whooping crane use of riverine habitat within the
 North-central Great Plains, USA. For this second analysis, we focused on
 the two metrics found to be important predictors of whooping crane use
 along the central Platte River, unobstructed channel width and distance to
 nearest forest or wooded area. Our findings indicate resource managers,
 such as the Program, have the potential to influence whooping crane use of
 the central Platte River through removal of in-channel vegetation to
 increase the unobstructed width of narrow channels and through removal of
 trees along the bank line to increase unforested corridor widths. Results
 of both analyses also indicated that increases in relative probability of
 use by whooping cranes did not appreciably increase with unobstructed
 views ≥200 m wide and unforested corridor widths that were ≥330 m.
 Therefore, managing riverine sites for channels widths &gt;200 m and
 removing trees beyond 165 m from the channel’s edge would increase costs
 associated with implementing management actions such as channel and
 bank-line disking, removing trees, augmenting flow, etc. without
 necessarily realizing an additional appreciable increase in use by
 migrating whooping cranes.
description: Data for: Whooping crane
 use of riverine stopover sitesThe data file contains 2
 tabs with data for each analysis we conducted.Whooping crane use of riverine
 stopover sites.xlsx