page_title: Sandhill crane
section_title: Status and conservation
hierarchical_section_title: Sandhill crane / Status and conservation
caption_attribution_description: Grus canadensis English: Sandhill Cranes flying at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, USA.
context_page_description: The sandhill crane is a species of large crane of North America and extreme northeastern Siberia. The common name of this bird refers to habitat like that at the Platte River, on the edge of Nebraska's Sandhills on the American Plains. This is the most important stopover area for the nominotypical subspecies, the lesser sandhill crane, with up to 450,000 of these birds migrating through annually.
  The sandhill crane was formerly placed in the genus Grus, but a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2010 found that the genus, as then defined, was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to create monophyletic genera, four species, including the sandhill crane, were placed in the resurrected genus Antigone that had originally been erected by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in 1853. The specific epithet canadensis is the modern Latin word for "Canadian".
context_section_description: In the 20th century, sandhill cranes were generally extirpated east of the Mississippi River. Although sandhill cranes are not considered threatened as a species, the three southernmost subspecies are quite rare. Resident populations, not migratory birds, cannot choose secure breeding habitat. Many subpopulations were destroyed by hunting or habitat change. Their desirability as a delicious game bird brought them the nickname of "Rib-eye of the sky" by a small group of modern hunters. The greater sandhill crane proper initially suffered most; by 1940, probably fewer than 1,000 birds remained. Populations have since increased greatly again. At nearly 100,000, they are still fewer than the lesser sandhill crane, which, at about 400,000 individuals, is the most plentiful crane alive today.
  Some migratory populations of sandhill cranes face population threats due to interspecies competition with snow geese. Since the 1990s, snow geese have eaten waste corn on which the cranes also rely prior to migration. Sandhill Crane populations are also threatened by hunting. It is legal to hunt cranes throughout the states of the Central Flyway, from the Dakotas and Wyoming south to Oklahoma and Texas. Nebraska is the sole state along the Central Flyway where hunting cranes is illegal. Despite losses from hunting, interspecies competition and other pressures such as habitat loss, the species has expanded its range. Since the early 2000s the sandhill crane has expanded both its winter (non-breeding) and breeding ranges northward, including into upstate New York.  In the 21st century, parts of the Midwestern United States have seen an extensive rebound of the species.
  
  The transplantation of wild birds and introduction of captive-reared birds into suitable low-population areas have been called a viable management technique.
  The Mississippi sandhill crane has lost the most range; it used to live along most of the northern Gulf of Mexico coast, and its range was once nearly parapatric with that of its eastern neighbor. As of 2013, about 25 breeding pairs exist in an intensively managed population. The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge—established in 1975 when fewer than 35 of the birds existed—has the biggest release program for cranes on Earth, and 90% of the cranes there were raised in captivity. The second viable egg from a two-egg nest was occasionally removed from the nests, starting in 1965, to become part of a captive flock. This breeding flock is divided between the Audubon Institute's Species Survival Center and White Oak Conservation in Yulee, Florida. These cranes have produced offspring for annual releases into the refuge.
  A Mississippi sandhill crane was the first bird to hatch from an egg fertilized by sperm that was thawed from a cryogenic state. This occurred at the Audubon Institute, as part of this subspecies' endangered species recovery plan.
  About 300 Cuban sandhill cranes exist; this is the least known of the populations.
  In January 2019, 25 to 30 thousand Cranes (both Greater and Lesser subspecies) were found wintering at the Whitewater Draw State Wildlife Area near McNeal in southeast Arizona.  
  Sandhill cranes have been tried as foster parents for whooping cranes in reintroduction schemes. This failed when the whooping cranes imprinted on their foster parents, later did not recognize other whooping cranes as their conspecifics, and unsuccessfully tried to pair with sandhill cranes instead.
caption: Flying at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, United States
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