Texas Fauna Project

Whooping Crane

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Jim Blackburn is an environmental lawyer, planner, and professor at Rice University. He helped form and lead the legal team for the Aransas Project, an effort to secure instream flows for the whooping crane, through litigation under the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit was triggered by the death of 23 cranes during the drought of 2008-9, more than 15% of the global wild population. Here, he describes how the drought and state-permitted diversions led to the death of cranes.