34 On the trail of vanishing birds 



on the very rim of the original salt sea. On their winter quarters 

 in Texas, the whooping cranes are seldom seen above the three- 

 foot contour line, just beyond sea level, whereas the sandhill 

 cranes are rarely observed below that line. The ratio of lesser sand- 

 hill cranes to whooping cranes in the Pleistocene deposits of 

 Rancho La Brea were 29 to 1, and, even more significant, the com- 

 parison between these two species today is some 150,000 sandhill 

 cranes to 20 or so whooping cranes. 



So, while we can readily understand the survival problem that 

 has faced Grus americana for so long a period, perhaps since the 

 end of the Pleistocene, this understanding does not detract in the 

 least from our admiration for his invincible will to survive, against 

 all the accepted rules of biological inevitability; nor does it deter 

 us in our current efforts to perpetuate his noble existence, by what- 

 ever means we have at hand. 



This last has not been easy, the world being what it is. In more 

 or less recent years, when whooping cranes needed help more than 

 ever before, the work of the Audubon Societies, and similar organi- 

 zations, began to change public opinion with regard to such mat- 

 ters. This, if you will, was a step in human evolution. Then came 

 the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Federal protection for many 

 species of birds, including the whooping crane. Perhaps the abol- 

 ishment of the spring shooting of waterfowl did as much to pre- 

 vent their extinction during the last forty years as any other move 

 that has been made in that time. But the most telling blow in 

 their favor was struck by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 

 1937, when the Aransas Refuge was established on the Texas 

 coast. Although the refuge was set up ostensibly as a winter haven 

 for ducks and geese, the Service had not been unaware of the fact 

 that more than half the remaining whooping-crane population 

 spent the winter within a portion of its area. This move has been 

 responsible in a very large measure for the continued survival of 

 the species. 



Aransas is now an accepted and widely regarded addition to the 

 important wildlife refuge system of our Federal government, but 

 its early days were not without their difficulties. As is so often 

 the case, local factions did not fully understand the purpose of the 



