73 On the migration battlefront 



We may picture these original flyways as extending all the way 

 from the deltas of the Mackenzie and Anderson Rivers above the 

 Arctic Circle to the southern extremes of west central Mexico 

 near the Pacific, southwest Louisiana, and the extreme northeast 

 coast of Florida. But the greatest width as a solid migration high- 

 way was the diagonal stretch from southern Alberta to northern 

 Illinois, a distance of nearly 1,500 miles. This diagonal marked 

 the approximate southern limit of breeding and the line of de- 

 parture for the several flyways. At the Gulf Coast these main fly- 

 ways narrowed to the 500-mile stretch between the Rio Grande 

 Delta on the west and Marsh Island, Louisiana, on the east. 



Compared with this broad migration highway of the past, the 

 thin line that is followed by these birds today is a sad but im- 

 pressive commentary on their present condition. The reduction, 

 gradual at first, gathered speed toward the end of the last century 

 and has kept on at a rapid rate down to very recent years. So far 

 as our own country is concerned, you can draw a straight line 

 north and south across the six states of North and South Dakota, 

 Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and if you begin this line 

 close to Portal, North Dakota, at the International Boundary and 

 terminate it at Austwell, Texas, some 1,500 miles to the south, you 

 will come very close to describing the present migration route. 

 Actually the pathway isn't a perfectly straight line, but it doesn't 

 deviate more than 50 miles in any direction from the route you 

 have drawn. 



As a migratory species the whooping crane was last reliably re- 

 ported in adjacent states in the following years: 



Indiana 1881 Arkansas 1914 



Michigan 1882 Minnesota 1917 



Wisconsin . . . 1884 Montana 1918 



Illinois 1891 Louisiana 1935 



Mississippi . . . 1902 New Mexico . . . 1938 



Iowa 1911 Colorado 1941 



Missouri 1913 Wyoming 1945 



None have been reported from these states since. 

 When the present campaign to save the whooping crane began, 



